I’ve made a lot of potholders over the past few years – I started out with these simple, bright ones (also, my first quilt binding!), moved on to some crazy-quilt patchwork ones (way too time-consuming but beautiful too!), and made an orange/yellow/purple pair for my mother-in-law. Then I learned about foundation piecing and quilt-as-you-go sewing and consequently, was able to make this blue/yellow pair for my mother and this brown pair for Nik’s brother and family.  (This was in a span from 2010-2015.)

Finally, last month, I made a pair (actually a triplet!) to match our own kitchen!

I had enough scraps leftover to make this cute little squeezy potholder from Sew Mama Sew’s recently posted tutorial.  It was easy but turned out so small – just barely big enough for my hands.  I’m sure the kids will be using it soon but if you do want to make one, I’d increase the size by maybe 10-15% (at least).

Here’s the backs of all three:

A word about the ants – when making the log cabin potholder, I discovered that I needed one more b/w print to finish out the log cabin and ants was all I had left.  I’d originally discarded that print because I HATE IT WHEN ANTS INVADE MY KITCHEN EVERY SPRING!!! But, then I decided to see the humor in it (plus I wanted to finish the potholder).  I decided that this is the only way I’m going to welcome ants into my kitchen!

Here’s the diagonal-strip potholder in-situ.*

on our floor

on our pot rack (to show you the red walls)

on our vintage, original to the house, Chambers stove

These are already getting stained! 🙂 Hooray for sewing for my own family every so often..

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*I like to show off and use Latin phrases whenever possible. HA!

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I did take pictures as I sewed these so I’ll be sharing a tutorial for them soon. 🙂

P. S. What’s black and white and red all over?