little quilty gift!

Do you like to give little Quilty Gifts?....I do. I gave these away yesterday to some new members of my church...a Welcome Gift. As you can see I also included a church cookbook. Have you figured out what these two little things are?

Hot Pads! ready for some heavy duty cooking!

I began with a USED TOWEL (clean of course). I cut an 8" square.

Then I looked from some nice backing fabric. This is a little bigger than the towel....9"x9"

I had these scraps left over from one of my recent quilts. These are 2 1/2" strips.

I laid first strip down and pinned.

Then I put the next strip on top - right sides together. Time to SEW! Sew through all layers! This is called "quilting as you go".

press open with your finger, or you can be professional and use an iron. :)

Here are all 4 strips sewn together and pressed open. The edges look a little rough.....

So Trim it! Trim to 8" square. Remember your towel square is 8" square.

We're almost done. :) choose a nice binding fabric and cut 2 1/2" strip from the width of fabric. Iron it in half with the right sides OUT.

Sew the binding to the BACK of the quilt starting at any corner.

Here's the first corner.....stop before the very end (about 1/4") turn to an angle and sew diagonally to the point.

Fold Up!

Fold DOWN!

Now continue to sew like this all around this little "quilt" until you run into this......

Stop before you get to the very end. You don't want to sew over the binding where you began.

PIN...PIN....PIN

Roll the binding over to the front and start pinning! You will even pin this tail of the binding if you want a little loop like I do.

Top stitch all around beginning with the long tail. I don't know how big of a loop you want....I left a 9" tail than makes a nice loop to use for hanging.

Here it is...almost done!

Fold over that tail and sew it down. Of course you'll want to tuck that raw edge under. This is very thick....but it works!

LOVELY!! can't wait to get cookin'