The Saturday before Valentine’s Day I got an itch to make a homemade Valentine for my hubby. He’s a man who has everything and we’ve never made much of a big deal over Valentine’s day. In fact last year we had Will’s delicious chicken marsala on our good china by candlelight. It was honestly a perfect evening. That’s one of the great things about my husband. He’s an excellent cook and it’s totally sexy!

The week before Valentine’s Day, my friend Jaime from Prudent Baby wrote a post on Valentines Poems for Every Personality. And on that list, I found one that was PERFECT for him. It’s called The Love Cook by Ron Padgett and it goes a little something like this:

Let me cook you some dinner.
Sit down and take off your shoes
and socks and in fact the rest
of your clothes, have a daquiri,
turn on some music and dance
around the house, inside and out,
it’s night and the neighbors
are sleeping, those dolts, and
the stars are shining bright,
and I’ve got the burners lit
for you, you hungry thing.

HOT! HOT! HOT! I love it. And I wanted to do a little something more with it than write it on a card. But what to do? Put it in a frame? Hand-embroider it on a dishtowel? Paint it on a utensil holder at one of those paint-it-yourself places? Of course I came up with this idea on approximately February 12 so I had to work fast.

Enter Prudent Baby once again! They were featuring a potholder contest at the same time for a chance to win a Brother sewing machine. That’s when I saw this:

And I decided that yes in fact a potholder can be sexy. So I went to the fabric store and picked out some Valentine-y but not too girly fabrics and some notions. Then I ran on over to Michael’s and grabbed some heat transfer paper and I got to work using the instructions that Prudent Baby provided for their contest.

You are definitely going to want to click on that hyperlink up there and look at Jaime’s tutorial for sewing a potholder if you are going to tackle this yourself. But below I’ll summarize the steps with a few tips on what I learned in the process. I must admit – sewing a potholder is a very satisfying little project. It really only takes an hour or so and with some cute fabric, what a sweet little hostess gift or thank you gift it could be.

Here’s how it goes:

1. Cut two 8″ squares of fabric, two 8″ squares of batting, two 5×8″ rectangles of fabric and two 5×8″ rectangles of batting. Pin batting to each fabric piece comme ca:

Now the fact is that you could just use one piece of dense batting in between two pieces of pretty fabric and that would be just fine. But the batting I bought was light so I wanted the extra layer to protect against heat. I was also planning to applique the heart to the potholder and I didn’t want the thread to show through on the other side. That’s why I opted to quilt each side separately, which brings be to point #2.

2. Place a pretty fabric square on a batting rectangle and quilt. I chose to do 1″ parallel lines which I estimated using my little handy ruler. (This is, by the way, a great project to practice sewing straight lines if that’s an issue for you – not that it is for me (cough).)

3. You’re going to do the same parallel line quilting on your second fabric square and batting set. Then move on to your rectangles. The rectangular fabric cuts will be used for the little hand mit portion of your potholder. Since my mit rectangles weren’t getting any appliques or special decoration, I just sandwiched the pretty fabric on either side of 2 pieces of batting, pinned it tight, and quilted away. Jaime says a walking foot for the sewing machine is great for this. I didn’t have one and I did just fine.

4. What you’re going to do next is press your message on to a heart-shaped bit of fabric using heat transfer paper. I didn’t get any photos of this but it’s pretty easy. Just make sure you give yourself some leeway to do a little trial and error with the transfer paper as it is NOT an exact science.

5. Then use the satin stitch setting on your sewing machine to applique the heart on to one of the fabric + batting squares. You’ll wind up with something that looks like this:

5. Now you are going to sew some bias tape to your rectangular pocket on one side and then base the rectangle on to the square while basting the squares together. If you have never sewn with bias tape (I hadn’t), check out Prudent Baby’s tutorial here. But be forewarned, you may become obsessed with bias tape as I now have. Bias tape makes me want to sew a LOT more often because it hides the ugliness! But I digress … here’s how we’re looking now …

6. Now it’s time to apply the bias tape all the way around. Don’t forget to make a provision for the loop to hang you pot holder with. And again, if you haven’t already, check out Prudent Baby’s Bias Tape Tutorial.

7. And that just about wraps it up!

8. Unless of course you are me and you have already decided in your head that a set of pot holders would be way cuter than just one.

I thought the conversation heart motif was kind of fun. Do you see that that one actually has iron marks on it? I suppose maybe the iron was a little too warm, the press was a little too firm, and the hold was a little too long on that heat transfer. But I decided that especially given the message of this pot holder that the iron marks give it more character. So I decided to go with it!

My Love Cook loves his new pot holders. And for less than $25 (I had to buy every single thing I used here … no scraps to be had), I made a cute, custom and funny valentine for my love. Handmade gifts are fewer and far between these days. Who better to give one to than the one you love the most?

Thanks, Prudent Baby, for the poem and pot holder inspiration. Clearly, I was inspired!

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