Only the most basic of beginner sewing skills are needed to stitch up a pair of custom oven mitts. No need to choose between kitschy prints and dull solids. Match the fabric of your oven mitts to anything you love — your Grateful Dead BBQ apron — your William Morris coordinates — Granny’s Irish lace curtains — the choice is yours!
Free Oven Mitt Sewing Pattern
A good starting point is Savvy Seams, to grab a free oven mitt pattern for either full-sized conventional oven mitts or the little fingertip pot-grabber style.
When I was a very little girl, my mother had a fingertip mitt that was made like the head of a bird (grab the pot handle in the bird’s open mouth) — I wore it right out, playing with it like a puppet. So there’s an idea, if you’re looking for something a bit different to sell for a charity bazaar or such.
For myself, klutzy as I’ve been known to be, I prefer the full-size oven mitts…
But I digress….
Heat-Proof Padding
Here’s the thing about sewing your own oven mitts, though — you really can’t just stuff them with ordinary quilt batting or bits of old blanket. That’s a great way to get a bad burn, or a kitchen bonfire!
For safety’s sake, please do ask at your local fabric shop for a proper insulating material like Insul~Bright. It’s washable, but the mylar woven through the polyester fibres will reflect heat away from your hand.
Which is, after all, kind of the whole point of wearing an oven mitt…
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Becca 03.22.07 at 7:52 pm
Does the insulating material go inside the mitt or on the outside?
domestika 03.22.07 at 8:00 pm
Hi Becca. The layer of heat-reflecting poly-mylar batting, Insul~Bright, would go on the inside.
Basically, you’ve got four layers - the fabric that will show on the outside of the mitts, the insulating layer, a layer of cotton batting, and then the lining material - in that order.
See, that puts the reflective layer just on the inside of the pretty fabric, so it’s out of sight but still close to the hot surface you’ll be touching with the oven mitt. Then there’s still a layer of cotton batting and the lining fabric between there and your skin: as good as anything you’d buy in a high-end kitchen shop.
Hope that’s clear!
Jen