Thank you Carla for this wonderful idea.
When Carla announced this hop I felt it was a no brainer that I sign on, after all I make kitchen goodies all year long. The problem was the "what". I started a list and it contained all of the basics. Problem with that was I wanted to do something(s) that weren't all that basic.
A couple of these ideas have shown up on my posts before but these versions are new just for this hop.
First Up are my faux paper towels. These came to be in my kitchen about a year ago when paper products were in high demand but no where to be found. At that time I found an old king size flannel top sheet and cut it into 6.5 x 11.5 chunks. I folded the edges in about .25 inch and zig zagged in place.
The picture shows the Bounty towel that I used as my guide next to a cut piece (1 of 12) that I found still in my UFO box, and a finished one that I have been using since last March.
I use these for just about everything. I now only use paper for things that are greasy, floor related or dog related.
I keep them on my counter is a basket I found in my garage and
they have their own laundry basket where they share space and weekly laundering with my dish towels and cloth napkins.
I have cut my paper towel usage at least in half over the year.
Second on my list is my new favorite. A Dish Drying Mat. This is a wonderful quick gift idea. For Christmas one of my quilty friends made me one. With it she included this link for the youtube video she based my mat on. Instead of batting these mats are filled with foam. The one she made was filled with Bosal and the one I made is filled with Pellon Flex Foam. Of course since I opened mine a day before Christmas it gave me time to make a couple as gifts and to share the link with a couple of my quilty friends. Each and every one of us have made and gifted away several of them and they were received happily.
I made this one for the gal who made mine. As we are all too familiar with the concept that you make and share a goodie and then don't have one of your own I thought she would be a great target for my Kitchen Gift Idea for this hop.
Front and Back
I think that this mat with matching dish towels is a wonderful and very useful hostess gift idea. If you wanted a slightly larger gift add matching pot holders or bowl buddies. I knocked out the mat and towels on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
My third and last item for this hop was the most fun and just a little bit challenging because I've not seen it done before so I had to logic it out on my own.
Do you remember when the candy bag zip pouches came on the quilting scene? Well at that time I got the idea that I could do something else with the concept like make a placemat. So 3 - 4 years later I was finally ready to give it a try.
So the other day I gathered together these items A couple of McDonald's plastic carry out bags, a roll of iron on vinyl, a sheet of large card stock and my quilting cutting and ironing stuff.
This became a learn as you go project. The bag is only placed on the card stock so when laying the vinyl on top things started to shift and things started to stick to things. Lots of swearing, and giggling and learning involved.
for anyone interested the bag is about .5 inch smaller than the card stock on all sides. the card stock ended up about .5 inch smaller than the vinyl on all sides after ironing it all together and trimming. It may have been easier to do with out the bag on the back but I really feel it was well worth the effort.
These placemats have already been gifted to a friend who shares my love of McRibs.
Ok so I don't know if this counts as number 4 or 3.5 but here goes.
A couple of days after finishing the placemats my brain had another major twitch. I was thinking about making one of these placemats for my great nephew who is 2. When trying to figure out what I wanted to use for the design I thought a coloring book page would be fun.
Then I thought that maybe it would be more fun if it could be colored over and over again. I was so excited to give this a try that I forgot to lower the setting on my iron down from cotton which caused a lot of puckering of the vinyl on the outside edge. I will use this one to test different types of coloring tools before trying it again. Oh, and up to the time of ironing it was easier to just stick the vinyl to the cardstock. Once I master the coloring part the next one I will just print different designs on front and back of the card stock.
I'm thinking GIVE AWAY, I think I'll make a seasonal type drying mat for one of you who leaves a comment. Just let me know what holiday / season you might like a drying mat for. I'll pick a winner Sunday evening 4/25/21
I'm done now. Please stop in and visit all of the greatly talented and creative folks participating in this hop. The variety of ideas will just knock you over and fill your must do list. I'm thinking Christmas gifts (may be) getting completed very early this year. Here is the complete list for your viewing pleasure.
Monday, April 19th
Tuesday, April 20th
Wednesday, April 21st
Thursday, April 22nd
