Remembrance Potholders

What a week it has been! I've had doctor visit after doctor visit. Let me just say, those visits have finally done it...scared me into being serious about my health. I may go down, but it won't be with a mouthful of Little Debbie's. It's probably just as well Twinkies left the market when they did.

Also, I've decided I am a procrastinator of the worst kind! I've known about the following project since May, and even though I still have a week left before they are due, I am just now finishing them...bad, bad girl!

My mother was one of those kind of cooks that could look in the pantry and in 30 minutes have a great meal on the table. Me? NOT so...everything she cooked was delicious and in her honor, I decided to make pot holder keepsakes for our family for Christmas this year.

Since only two or three members of the family read my blog, I won't be giving away the surprise to many! And a word of caution!!! This is a time consuming project...not expensive, but it IS a labor of love. So if any family members are reading this and I know who you are :) , when you open yours at our family Christmas, you can really make a big deal of it...haha...just kidding...I think.

I originally saw this idea in Country Living magazine and then saw where a lady would do this for you for $38. What?! Yes, Virginia, it's worth it.

The first thing you must do is select a recipe in your chosen person's handwriting and copy it so that you have at least three copies on a sheet of copy paper. This is if you want to make more than one.

You will eventually be making a copy of that recipe onto cloth
and then attaching the cloth recipe to a potholder.

The potholder prototype was green, but the ones I did for family were black.
They match a monogrammed dishtowel I also made for said family.

Step One: Gather your materials.
 Buy your potholders. Also buy smooth material on which to print your chosen recipe.
I used khaki broadcloth.
The other materials are:  fusible Pellon or WonderUnder, an iron, a printer, and a sewing machine.
Some cute ribbon and a button are optional.
Step Two: cut two pieces of fusible web as wide as regular printer paper and about 1 inch high.

Step Three: Press your broadcloth so it has no wrinkles..at all.
Then sandwich the fusible web strips between the cloth and the computer paper at the top and bottom.
Press lightly until the paper is bonded to the cloth and it all lies flat.
Cut out the cloth using the paper as your pattern.

This is the paper and cloth after bonding but before being cutting out.

Step Four: This is how my printer accepts paper, so I carefully slipped the paper with the cloth attached into the printer and copied the recipes onto the cloth.

I was able to get three of my mother's recipes for Poppy seed Chicken onto the paper sized cloth.
Now, this is dicey. Once I used double sided tape rather than the fusible web and it didn't work so well,
 thus, the fusible web.
However,  REMEMBER this:
When placing your recipes to be printed on the original paper, Skip down about an inch on the page to print...thus you will avoid having the bonded part of the paper stick to the back of the recipe.

Step Five: Cut out the cloth recipe. Try to do this smoothly and clip all little threads as you go.
Attach the cloth recipe to the potholder by cutting a piece of fusible web the size of the recipe and
 ironing the recipe to the front of the potholder.

As you can see, the resulting copied recipe is clear and looks very good!

Step 6: With my Brother SE 400 machine, I finished the edges of the cloth recipe with an overcast stitch.
This could be done by hand or a little ribbon trim or rickrack could be ironed on around the recipe.

Step 7: I added a bow and a button at the top.

The bow color matches the monogrammed initial on the monogrammed dish towels.

I have no idea if the potholders will hold up to washing,
but these aren't for everyday use.
These are a remembrance of my mother and her skills in the kitchen
and the love with which she prepared our food for so many years.