I "Heart" You

I enjoy Pinterest and get so many good ideas that I can never hope to follow up on but there is one potholder that gets "liked" on an almost daily basis:

It has come to the attention of so many people that I decided I better make this one up.  It turned out not to be as easy as it looked for a variety of reasons.

The fabrics in the above color combinations were not to be found. What? It's just a polka dot fabric! After searching online and in too many stores, there is no yellow with red dots nor the aqua with white dots. I tried, really tried, but could not find it. That's alright, I can be creative and use  other colors. So I get out my polka dot fabric and give it a try. Let's just say my first attempt was not a great success due to the size of the squares: they need to be two inch squares, not one inch! Then I tried two inch squares only to find I needed to use a walking foot on my sewing machine and pay very careful attention to my piecing. I finally made a good one last night so I wanted to share the steps with you.

First, I needed to cut each of the three chosen fabrics into 2.5 inch strips using a rotary cutter:

Fabric cut into 2.5" strips on the width of the fabric

Then I needed to piece the long strips together, being very careful to keep the same distance from the edge so they would be match later with less grief:

Strips sewn together before pressing

I made this up with 12 strips of fabric, pressed with all of the seams facing one direction, pressed again on the top, then cut this new piece of fabric into six strips cross-ways. Now I can stagger these strips to give it the pieced effect without having to sew each tiny square, using my Pfaff 1222 with the IDT as their version of a walking foot:

Strips staggered to see how to sew together

Six strips sewn together would give me enough new fabric for two hearts:

Strips sewn back together, pressed, and ready to cut out 2 hearts

All of the hard work is now done so I can sew this together with the layers of batting, heat reflective layer, and pockets for the back:

Back of pot holder to show pockets where you slide you fingers in

I forgot to sew the binding on with my new double layer technique but the old way worked just fine, too:

Binding sewn onto the front, ready to trim pot holder
edges and sew binding to back by hand stitching

The above photos turned out pink but they are really red, black, and neon green:

Final version in red, black, and green fabrics

Here's a photo of my first two attempts with the final version, just not pink as the photo turned out:

First version with one inch square at the back,
 second attempt in middle with different fabrics

I like the middle version with brown, orange, and red, too, but it needed some color to make it "pop" so the green did that in the next version. Is it the same as the Pinterest heart? No, but not bad either:

Pinterest love

Final version

Good lessons learned about piecing, colorways, and how to meet the public's demand (we shall see if they sell!). I have more fabrics in polka dots and have more colorways to work with: red, white, and blue will be the next one. But right now I just need to finish up so much sewing but know I will never be ready. That's okay, the craft fair will still come and I'll take what I've got and be happy at the end of the day (like I have a choice? Ha!).