Since I'm now on the subject of gifts, I figured I'd share last year's homemade Christmas presents too: quilted pot holders / trivets and matching linen towels. I was particularly pleased with them, I thought using the quilting method on the pot holder was fun to try, as I had never done anything quite like it before. 
Once I had picked out the fabric and cut perfect squares, it came together pretty quickly, it was quite a lot of ironing though to do in between sewing to get nice seams. 
I used linen fabric for the backing, made a little pocket where you could slip your hand into, and also doubled up on the heat resistant batting to ensure you could hold a hot pot without burning your hands. 
After trying to sew a bit with this quilting technique, I would love to take it a step further and actually make a quilt! 
For the matching towels, I used 100% linen fabric again, and added some of the same decorative fabric, sewn together in thinner strips. 
All in all I think this little project was really fun and I was really pleased with the result. I probably should sew something like this for our kitchen too, since you don't really get to keep anything when you make Christmas presents!
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