Mini-Tute: Thanksgiving Handprint Potholder Keepsake

Happy Thanksgiving!

 I love little hand-print turkeys, don't you? And this one, made out of fabric will last and last. I told my husband (who actually made our turkey today), not to use it on anything messy. I kind of imagined it to be pretty much (solely) decor with the occasional (maybe) use. But he said, "Are hot lids OK?" Hmm. Eh. Well. All right. I gave him the green light for lids. "Just be careful!"

 So are you looking for a quick and (relatively) easy Thanksgiving keepsake to make this weekend with your kids? Try this.

Supplies:

- Masking Tape

- Fabric Markers

- Pencil

- Fabric for front, back, and the turkey

- Binding fabric

- Batting (you could use the potholder kind if you plan to use this)

First, tape a rectangle of fabric (mine was roughly 8"x6") on the table and then trace your child's hand on the fabric using pencil.

Then, go over the hand with fabric marker.

Let your child color the hand with fabric markers. (Just make sure he doesn't run off with them!) I encouraged my son to use a different color for each "feather."

Draw the face on the turkey and, as my son suggested, "Give'em a Pilgrim hat!" Will do.

Don't forget to add legs!

Cut out the turkey from the fabric (this was a great way to get rid of the "coloring beyond the lines" that my 4-year-old did big-time on the blue finger).

I appliqued the turkey to some contrasting fabric using Steam-a-Seam2 and some small zig-zag stitches (tension at 0-1 helps achieve this).

For the back, you can use a solid piece of fabric or do some piecing like I did.

Then, I appliqued a patch of white fabric after writing "Thanksgiving 2011" on it.

For the batting, I used actual potholder material that I got a while back at Joann's.

For the binding, I used leftover binding fabric from this quilt and attached it first to the back, then machine stitched the other half down on the hand side.

Lastly, I stitched a little loop on one corner so that I could hang this potholder in the kitchen. 

  After I took these pictures, I wrote my son's name and age in the bottom right-hand corner of the turkey side.

Perfect Thanksgiving decor with a practical twist!

Linking up here: 

Our Creative Spaces
Tatertots and Jello Weekend Wrap-Up

Wonky Potholder...or Mug Rug?

I set out to make a wonky log cabin potholder. I had never done wonky, log cabin, OR potholder before. Well! I had a good time and I think I was doing fairly well...until I got to the binding.

 I thought I could just machine-stitch the binding and it'd be fine (I hand-sew the bindings on my quilts and haven't had much experience with machine-quilting bindings). I mean, the thing was small. Really. How hard could it be?

 I ended up having to stitch around the square twice. I wasn't very happy about that. In the end, I think my wonky creation could've been a potholder if I had the fancy insulating material to sandwich inside. But, alas, I didn't. And so.

 I think my wonky potholder is better suited as a Wonky Mug Rug.

I believe the square works well for this sort of thing. Imagine the little plate with a pumpkin scone next to my mug. 

How did I finish and 

what did I learn in the process?

I ended up quilting with long straight stitches in a random-ish up-and-down way. I do like how that turned out. I also added a little label and loop on the back (next time I will just do a loopy label and skip the extra step). Finally, I think the next time I do a log cabin block, I will try to match up the scraps a little more to create some visual unity. 

Overall, a fun afternoon project. And having some cute scraps to work with makes it easy on the eyes, which is never a bad thing. :)

I'm excited to link up with all the talented folks here: