ITH Fruit Gnomes Potholders Embroidery Project

Cut a piece of cotton batting to fit your hoop.  This batting is used as the stabilizer for this project. Cut a 9” square of Insulbrite®; a 9” square of your back fabric; a 6”square of the main fabric for the front; 4 1 ¾” x 9 strips of contrasting fruit print fabric; a 2 ½” x the width of the fabric strip for binding. Tautly hoop the cotton batting in your embroidery hoop.

Run the 1st color stop (CS) as placement lines for your fabrics.  This first run is stitched directly on the tautly hooped cotton batting without any additional stabilizer.

Spray adhesive on your center square fabric.  Carefully align it in the center square of the placement lines.  Place your center fabric accurately as the tack down stitches are only 1/8” fro, the edges of the fabric.

Run CS2 to tack down the center fabric.

Change your upper thread color to the color you want for your Gnome.  Run CS 3 to stitch the Gnome.

Change your upper thread color to the color you want for the quilting.  Run CS 4 to stitch the quilting.

Lay one 1 ¾” x 9” strip of the fruit print face down on the left side of the center square.  Align the left edge of the strip with the left edged of the center square.  If you happened to have more than that 1/8” of fabric along that side of the square, place the left edge of the fabric even with the tack down stitches of the center block.  Have the ends of the fabric strip extend beyond the outer placement lines by at least ½” on each end.

Run CS 5 to stitch down the strip.

Fold the strip fabric right side up.  Finger press or press the seam with an applique iron to get it folded back neatly.  Tape the edges of it to the hoop.

Following Step 7 through 9 lay, stitch and flip the strip at the top of hoop using CS 6 to seam the strip to the potholder.

Repeating the same steps stitch, flip and tape the strip on the right side of the project using CS 7 to seam the strip to the potholder.

Repeat the steps one more time to attach the bottom strip to the bottom of the potholder using CS 8 to stitch the seam.  Where each fabric strip is folded across a perpendicular strip there will be a little unstitched space.  Adjust your tape so that each of those areas has the tape outside of the original placement lines, but close enough to the placement lines so that your presser foot will not lift or get caught in these spaces for the final stitching.

Remove the hoop from the machine, do not unhoop.  Lay the hoop face down on a flat surface.  Lay the Insulbrite® over the placement lines on the back of the hoop.  Lay the back fabric over the Insulbrite®.  Since a multi-needle machine was being used for this sample I taped the fabric and Insulbrite to the top edge of the hoop that would be going back into the machine.  If using a single needle machine, you might want to tape the top edge of the hoop.  Or, to play it save you can add tape to all edges.  The point is you do not want any fabrics shifting or getting folded back when you return the hoop to the machine.

Return the hoop to the machine and run the final CS in a color thread to match or coordinate with the fabrics.

Remove the project from the hoop and remove all the tape.  Lay the ¼” mark of a see-through ruler along the final tack down stitches and trim all sides to a ¼” seam allowance.

Your trimmed potholder will now look like this.

Stitch the binding to the potholder using your preferred method or see our article, “Binding an ITH Potholder with a Hanging Loop” Those instructions show the binding applied with a contrasting thread to make the Steps easier to follow.

These are so much fun to make and useful too!  Make the whole set for you and your friends or craft fairs.