Sewing Review: Double Oven Mitt, No Pattern, From Scratch

If you can’t tell, from my lack of posts, it’s been kind of crazy in my personal life this past month. On the bright side, I have tons of sewing and travel posts to catch you up on! Starting with this one! A Sewing Review: Double Oven Mitt, No Pattern, From Scratch.

If you’ve been following along since the beginning of summer, this was on my Summer Bucketlist item. I’m thrilled to check this off but, in all honesty? This was my prototype! More on that below.

There’s no way I can take responsibility for designing or developing this oven mitt. Giving credit where it’s due, I followed along with Debbie Shore’s Youtube tutorial! Which was an utter delight. Not to mention straightforward and easy to sew along with.

I hope to use more of her at-home sewing ideas in the future. She mentioned a tea cozy and I cannot stop thinking about it.

Table of Contents

Sewing Review: Double Oven Mitt, No Pattern, From Scratch

Lemme tell you… I learned a lot in such a short amount of time. Let’s get into this.

Three rectangles & six squares

That’s it. It’s literally fabric cut into three rectangles and six squares. Period.

Here’s what I used:

Two rectangles of vintage fabric
One rectangle of insulated lining (I used insul-bright)
Four squares of another vintage fabric
Two squares of insulated lining

A large salad bowl is the perfect half circle

Couldn’t make this up if I tried. It was absolutely perfect and easy.

I used my favorite salad bowl to mark the edges of this pattern and it worked. My only regret is not cutting them all at the same time and marking them all together. They weren’t all even and even though I thought I could fix it, it’s still not perfect.

Again: proto-typeeee.

Blue chalk can stain light fabric

Ugh. Rookie mistake but it’s true. I found out the hard way.

When quilting for the first time, don’t use blue chalk! Well, at least don’t press it into the fabric like you’re a she-haulk. It’s gonna be tough to wash out. Or worse – It won’t.

I tried everything. Vinegar and water. Just vinegar. A sponge. Til finally, I tried oxi-clean. Which somehow got it out but, it still looked stained when scrubbing.

Don’t use your bathtub bristle brush to get blue chalk out

Did you use bleach the last time you used your bristle brush? Huh. Well, I did.

Therefore… maybe, you too will accidentally bleach your beautiful vintage 1980s fabric. Sigh. 😩

Serging the ends might not be smart

I ended up serging the entire mitt because I had to wash the fabric (due to the blue chalk). It was fraying all over. I wish I hadn’t serged it. In the end, it causes a lot of bunching on the curved edges and I had to keep re-doing it. Resulting in, non-perfect edges.

Another lovely lesson. Did I mention this was a prototype? And I’m so happy it is.

Stick to the 1″ bias binding

I accidentally purchased Double Fold Bias Tape, which is double the thickness. So I ended up cutting it in half, which still wasn’t a great outcome. Double-check what you buy before moving forward so confidently. I think what you want to use is the 7/8″ standard bias tape.

The alternative is to make your own bias binding! Which is something I want to attempt next time.

Definitely make this double oven mitt

Honestly, I can’t recommend this project enough. It would be a fantastic lesson for new sewers and it was a great refresher for household items for seamstresses. I haven’t made anything unwearable since my DIY Christmas bags from 2021 (which I thought I wrote a blog post about but apparently didn’t? Mental note for Blogmas!).

This did take me a few hours to make, especially because I messed up so royally with the blue chalk incident.

Now I feel like a pro and am SO excited to make another one. I want to make at least 3 more before jumping into the one I truly want to make for summer.

I’ll keep you updated on my progress! Til then, as always, thank you for reading. 💕