I found the Steelers fabric in a bag of scraps which was a gift from one of my other sisters. They were oddly shaped pieces which is why I had to piece the front of the potholders with that black strip. I backed them with some heavy red fabric that was the wrong weight for quilting or doll clothes. And instead of batting, I used some Table Felt (a.k.a. Silence Cloth) which had been sitting around in my sewing room for years. I think it will be thick enough for functional potholders. Even if it's not, I doubt if that will be a problem. My sister was so pleased with my gift that she plans to use them as decorative objects so that they will "stay nice."
Because this was a small project, and I was making it up as I went along, I decided to experiment a bit with the binding. I used 2.5 inch wide strips cut crosswise to the grain of the fabric and folded it bringing the long cut edges together. (This is what I usually do with all my quilts because it protects the edge of the quilt which tends to get a lot of wear.)
On one of them, I sewed the raw edges of the binding to the raw edges from the front of potholder using a 1/4 inch seam and using the standard method of mitering the corners. (Here's a tutorial if you've never done this before.) I brought the folded edge of the binding to the back and then glued it down using dots of Roxanne's Glue-Baste-It. (I also tried Jillily Studio's Appli-Glue and Elmer's Washable School Glue. I liked Roxanne's best. It's a little thicker and seems to grab hold more quickly.)
Having the folded edge of the binding glued down makes it a lot easier to machine stitch the other side of the binding because it can't shift and is not distorted by pins. And this is important because I was planning to attach the folded edge of the binding by sewing a line of stitches right next to the binding, in the ditch so to speak, on the front of the potholder. I've found that if I use a thread color that matches the binding, the stitches blend in with the binding and do not really show up on the front of the quilt. On the back of the quilt, the stitches stay on the binding because the part that is folded to the back is wider than the part that is in front.
On the second one I sewed the binding to the back of the potholder. Then I brought the folded edge to the front and sewed it down by machine right on the binding. At the corners I sewed a little past the corner, then reverse stitched back to it before lifting my presser foot (with the needle down) and pivoting the potholder to go down the next side. In effect, I was back-stitching in both directions on each corner. (There's a close up below, though I don't know how well you can see it since both the binding and the thread are black.)
In this second method, I liked the reinforcement of the corners, but when stitching down the binding from the front, my stitches sometimes wandered off the binding in the back. But hey, it's just a potholder. And that's a liberating thought considering how tense I sometimes get about my quilts.
So on the whole I was pleased with my quickie project. I wish I had chosen a white or unbleached muslin for the backing so that the lines of quilting wouldn't show up so much. But as I said, it's just a potholder.
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