DIY Quilted Hot Pads Tutorial

Changing your kitchen up and want a little something extra special? Why not make your own hot pads? It’s fun and easy, and you can have the exact design you want! You can use up some fabric scraps, match the colors with your tea towels or make these as a fun gift for the holidays. I wrote a little tutorial with a free pattern for you. These hot pads are finished with bias tape as binding and I'll show you how to nearly turn the binding around the corners. Follow along for this easy-peasy project with a great result :)

hotpad with pear fabric and black binding with a loop

Materials Needed

Gather the following supplies to make two hot pads.

cotton fabric for both the pad itself and the binding, or premade bias tape
warm and bright batting
Insul-Brite for insulation

Tools:

Coordinating/matching thread
Walking foot with guide bar and the Stitch guide foot (presser foot #24 in 32 piece presser foot set)
Rotary cutter
Rotary ruler
Rotary mat
Heat erasable gel pens
Clips or pins
Bias binding Tools
Seam gauge

Step-by-Step Instructions

Make the Quilt Sandwich

The first thing you want to do is cut two 8”x 8” squares out of your two fabrics, the batting, and the Insul-Brite. So two of each. You should have eight squares in total. If you have a directional design, make sure that it is going the right way.

Now we make our sandwich. Start with the back fabric, then your warm and bright batting, Insul-Brite, and then your top fabric.

If you are a little wary about sewing a super straight line diagonally, or if you just like extreme precision, take a contrasting colored heat erasable gel pen (or marking tool of your choice) and your rotary ruler and draw a diagonal line from corner to corner- creating an “X” on your top piece of the sandwich.

Now use clips or pins to secure the sandwich together.

Take your walking foot, guide bar, and seam gauge. Put the end of your seam gauge in the center of your walking foot and measure how wide you want the lines spaced out. Adjust your guide bar to that width. I like my hot pad lines to be 1 ¼” wide.

Once you’ve set your width between the walking foot and the guide bar, attach it to your machine, and now you’re ready to sew your hot pad. Line up your needle so it’s going along your markings, starting in one corner and going diagonally to the opposite corner.

Once the diagonal line is sewn, you’re ready to start sewing the other lines. Set your guide bar along the stitching that you just did and that is your starting point for the next line.

Now you should have 2 lines sewn and this is the process you will use to quilt the rest of your hot pad. Make sure to remove any pins or clips as you sew. Also, make sure that as you quilt, your guide bar stays along the line adjacent to your current path.

Repeat the above steps to quilt the other direction to create squares across the fabric. Once you have your hot pad quilted it should look like this:

Add the Binding

Now it’s time for the binding. You can buy bias tape in a store or make the strip yourself with a bias-binding tool. If you have a directional pattern for your hot bad, make sure the loop that you make with the binding, will end with your print facing the right direction (in one of the upper corners). With this hot pad, I started the binding going left to right because I wanted the loop in the upper left-hand corner.

When you get to the first corner, leave a ¾ inch space between your clip and the corner.

Bring the binding down to the other side and then clip it down. As you clip it down the corner will pucker up. This is normal.

Adjust the binding in the direction you want your mitred corner to go. Since I was working left to right, I pushed by extra binding to the right so my mitred corner would go to the left. Try to have the bottom of your mitred corner to line up with the bottom of the biased binding as much as possible. Clip it down.

Continue this all the way around the hot pad until you reach the corner where you started. When you get back to the corner where you started, line up your seam gauge with the top of the hot pad and measure out four inches and cut the biased binding. This will be used to create your handing loop.

Make the Loop

Now attach your stitch guide foot. Take your biased binding and top stitch as close to the edge as possible to it. Continue until you reach the corner where your bias binding started with the four inch tail.

Next take your four inch tail, create a loop, and tuck the unfinished edge under the edge of the binding. Clip it down.

The loop won’t be in line with the top of your hot pad, so just maneuver it until it lines up and then clip it down.

Using your stitch guide foot, top stitch the bias binding. I lined up the edge of my hot pad with the 5th notch from the left. This got the top stitch really close to the bottom edge but there were a couple spots where I didn’t catch the bottom layer of bias binding. So I used the 4th notch from the left as my guide on the second hot pad and it worked much better. Once you get to the side where your loop is, blend your stitches to attach the loop.

Voila!

Now you are ready to start using your hot pad yourself or gift it to a family member or friend for their enjoyment. I love to see licensed character prints and find that using those fabrics can bring both excitement and enjoyment when cooking; make two to gift as a set. Hope this sewing tutorial convinced you in how easy it is to make beautiful things for your home and kitchen. Just get to it and enjoy the process of creating something from scratch!