pot holders...

As much as I love these Together Forever bears and the Snowmen potholders that I've been using forever... it was time for a change.

I'm not sure why I never bought new potholders. Ones that actually looked good. Ones that I would be so embarrassed when I pulled them out when company was over. I don't mind the snowmen, but those should have been reserved for Christmas time... not July. The together forever bears were a wedding gift... 7 1/2 years ago... and they didn't look good then... and I'm still using them.

So I've been a little busy correcting this problem of mine...

My friend Linda works for an interior design company and they are always getting different swatches of fabric lines. One night she brought me over this book of sample fabric that had the cutest fabric ever. I'm in love with it, but the pieces are too small to make pillows or something like that out of it... pot holders it was! I think that I'll use the rest to piece a quilt, so more on that later.

I wanted to try my hand at stippling, since I have never really done it before other than just on scrap fabric. Two broken needles, and lots of unpicked thread later... they were stippled. Man, that is some intense stuff. One thing that I learned is to use 100% polyester thread. If I used thread that hand any cotton in it my top thread would bunch all up and break (resulting in unpicking and broken needles). I need a lot more practice before I try stippling something other than... potholders.

I used spray adhesive to hold all my layers together. I tried to pin them but they turned out much better if I used this stuff.

Then I was feeling confident and wanted to try my hand at some fancier stippling. I decided to try out my cursive handwriting that I learned in the fourth grade... I'm really happy with how these turned out.

The backs...

The fronts...

I love how they turned out. I'm excited to use them. I'll try to enjoy them while they are all nice and clean, you know, before they are burned and covered in spaghetti sauce.

Cause in the end... they are just potholders.