Potholder/ Towel Tutorial

As I had promised a few minutes ago I made a tutorial of my potholder kitchen towel project. This is my first tutorial and in fact this project is so easy even a cave man could do it and it doesn't even need a tutorial. I just wanted to make a tutorial to say that I made one ;-)

Now follow along.......

Use a whole kitchen towel. It can be a towel with a design on each half and that will make a reversible towel. Or it can be a towel with the design only on one half.

A potholder with a hook on it. If it has no hook, I don't know what you would do!!! Just kidding, I am sure that you would be able to come up with some smashing idea for a button loop!! My potholder is solid black. You can, however use a potholder with a design like the rooster shown in my previous post but the towel will not be reversible.




Find the very center of your towel lengthwise and width wise. My towel had a nice little center line down the middle where the design was mirrored on the other side! Thanks Mrs. Towelmaker for helping out!

Find the center of your potholder. Also my potholder had a right and wrong side because of the care label and I wanted the label to be on the inside of my towel when it was hung so this label didn't show. So many decisions.....

Go to your sewing machine (If your dog did not chew the power cord on your machine, that is..........ah hum....Terri! ....is that Terri Griswald? This story just reminded me of the Griswalds Christmas vacation for some reason...I love you Terri!!) and run a gathering line of stitches down the center of the towel with your longest stitch length.

Gather the stitches by pulling on the bobbin thread of this line of stitches and gently tugging and easing the towel so that it fits the width of your potholder. Pin in place with right sides together. Go take a coffee break because you deserve it now as you have worked way too hard thus far!

Now run a straight stitch across the towel and potholder with both pieces opened so as not to catch them in your seam.
This is what the back side looks like stitched down.

Trim your threads.

Another look at the backside after stitching and trimming.

Sew on, by hand or machine, any sort of matching button that will fit in the loop on the outside of the opposite side of the potholder. Hang on your oven handle, kitchen cabinet drawer pulls or if you are fortunate enough to have one, your Hoosier cabinet drawer pull!!!!!!! Now go refresh that cup of coffee that you didn't drink because you couldn't wait to get this project finished. Grab a piece of cheesecake while you are at it!

Then sit back and sip coffee and eat cheesecake while admiring your new kitchen towel! You deserve a break now!

Can't take the country out of the girl......

and please don't try to take me out of the country either!

Leslie and I had a girls day out yesterday (no men and no kids) and got to do some way too long overdue antiquing and shopping! Woowoowooo!!! We went to Mt Airy NC. We ate at Barney's Cafe. I saw a man dressed as Otis, the town drunk, meandering down the street in front of the cafe with his white dress jacket, hat and brown liquor jug waving at folks as they went by!!!!! So much fun to be had in Maberry!!!

We went to our favorite antique store!! Found some more enamelware there!!! That always makes me happy! This huge milk pail has some white paint dripped on the wooden handle.....hum? Looks like it came from my house!!!

Cutesy little antique aluminum measuring cup!

This Sellars measuring cup came from another primitive store that we found along the way down the mountain. Crockett's Country Store.
They have a website http://www.crockettscountrystore.com/ Leslie and I searched half a day for them last year two counties over and by the time we found them they were closed for the day. We never went back. When we passed this store yesterday and read the name out loud together we said oh no we have to go back!!! It was them, they have moved closer to me and all my favorite shopping!!!! They have a blog too. Go on over and check them out!

I found this pump for my antique green mason jar that I put by my kitchen sink with my dish detergent in!!

This beautiful braided rug for my kitchen sink! I am so in love with braided rugs, always have and always will be in love with them! They are the epitome of country in my book! As are priscilla curtains. Not just any priscilla curtains, but the ones that are hung so full on the rod that they are so ruffled with just the right punch!!!!!!! They sell those too for an incredible price. I had to have a couple valances made for my kitchen and pantry. That for starters and I will cover one window at a time til I get my whole house filled with these curtains. I have always loved the look and I have always been in a dilemma of what type of curtains I wanted in my house and never happy with any of them, always in the back of my mind wanting these! I can't wait for them to come in this week. They are custom made per order and I was told they would be in next week!!!!!!!!

I picked these cutesy kitchen towels up at Kmart yesterday.

To make more of these! My wonderful sister-in-law Wanda, gave me this one for Christmas. I love it! I have not had an oven door that I could hang a towel on until this one. These are nothing but a potholder sewn to a towel and add a button! Sew easy and sew cute and practical. These will cost me $1.50 each plus a button that I have zillions of anyway!!! I love the country look of the towels that I found too.
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I know that I am painting all my furniture, walls and floors
white but I still can't seem to stay away from country decor. That's just me, a country girl and I can't change that fact so I might as well go with that in my decor! After all it's what makes you happy in your own home. If Mama Ain't Happy, Ain't No One Happy!!!!!
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I'll try to remember and take pictures so I can post a tutorial of the kitchen towels for you guys!!

Do you know a truck driver?

My husband is a truck driver for a local lumber company. He has been with the company for 21 years. For the past several years he has mostly been on heavy equipment in the woods or building streets or on some sort of equipment job each day. Occasionally he will have to crawl back in a truck and haul logs if they are behind or lumber if gets behind. This company has so many trucks that it is hard for the few mechanics to keep up with the work that these trucks need to have done on them daily must less the big stuff that needs to be repaired.





Each time Danny crawls in one of these trucks he about strokes because of the stuff that is wrong with the vehicle. Until now any faulty equipment tickets, over weight tickets or any tickets that is not the drivers fault, the company had to pay the fine. As of July 2010 new federal laws are going into effect where any CDL holder who gets a ticket for anything...let me stress here anything, the driver and the company will have to pay the fine and points will be issued per violation. In July they will go back on each driver for 3 years and total up the points that he already has against him and if they have 30 points at that time they will lose their CDL. When they reach 30 points they will lose it then. It is estimated that 175,000 will lose their license in July alone. Danny has no tickets against him in the past 3 years thank goodness!





Can you imagine what the trickle down effect will be from this? I know that this will take some crappy drivers off the road but it will also take some really good drivers who are working for companies who can not or will not keep there equipment up to par. The clincher here is the fact that those points go with the driver when he leaves a company and then he can't get a job with another company either. The good drivers for the really big companies who do spend the time and money on taking care of their rigs will be OK but forget the little man again.





Also between now and July if a driver gets a new ticket the point value will triple!!!!! Danny has been trucking this week hauling pulp wood and of course he was stopped this morning by the DOT to weigh him. Thank goodness no ticket!!!!! Another driver was stopped today and was given a warning for a few different little things that he would ordinarily bring home a ticket for. This other driver will not have a job come July due to 2 different tie down violations and a couple speeding tickets with in the past 3 years anyway. Actually most of these drivers will be gone in July due to the points from overweight tickets alone. Truck drivers can't afford to pay for these tickets themselves and the companies can't afford to stay in business if they can't keep good drivers either. What is this world coming to? We need to drop to our knees and pray really hard for our country.



Please go to the CSA 2010 website and read all these stupid rules and let me know if you have someone that you are close to that this will effect.

Danny also has his own bulldozing business on the side and needs a CDL to be able to drive his own dump truck and move his equipment around.

You can not teach an old dog new tricks.....

Well maybe you can teach and old "dog" new tricks but not an old "lady" like myself. You have all heard the old saying "Set in their ways". Yep by the time a woman turns 40 she is set in her ways and she stays like that til she is dead and gone. Whether it be because she is old or senile she can't take change and run with it.

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With that being said......I have been working on my kitchen project and this has included some very serious deep cleaning. Cleaning out drawers. Junk drawers and other drawers that had other purposes in the beginning but ended up being junk drawers. I worked as a nurse for the past 10 years and 4 years prior to that as a CNA and I always kept a roll of tape in my pocket at all times while working. This was good tape!! I tried to remember to leave it in my locker at work or in my tote bag so that I could take it back the next day. However over the 14 years there seemed to be a lot of this tape that was found throughout my house and car or truck and pocket books. I use this tape all the time for all sorts of various jobs around the house. Bandaging my husband after he split his finger wide open yesterday while putting wood in the stove. (Clutz, I am wearing off on him) Labeling things, you name it I have got the supply of tape for the job!!!

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In my cleaning frenzy I found about 12 rolls of said tape and since I was totally rearranging and organizing things I had to think of the perfect place for my tape to be kept and put it there. In less than one minute I needed a piece of tape to hold down a roll of drawer paper that I was cutting for a drawer and I turned back to the one drawer that used to hold at least one roll of tape at all times, and it was not there..........I had to search for 5 minutes trying to remember where I just put all this tape. I will never be able to find anything again!!!

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Of course this comes maybe 30 minutes after hanging all my pots back up on my pot rack in the kitchen. The pot rack is directly over the kitchen island in the middle of the kitchen. As I hung the very last really heavy pot up I thought about how it would be really bad if one of us ran into these pots before I got the island moved back in. Within about 30 seconds from hanging the last pot up, I thought of something to do in the other room and I took off looking down at my feet and....BAM!!! I hit that last big heavy pot with the entire top of my head. It almost knocked me down to the floor. I saw some really pretty stars in some really pretty colors!!!! Maybe that explains the tape story??? Maybe not I think it's just everyday life for me to be forgetful and set in my ways!!

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At least I didn't move my barn off it's foundation like Leslie did last summer. We were in my barn talking to each other and she turned around and hit my barn door so hard that it literally moved my barn. We can laugh about that one now but it wasn't really funny right at the time. Good thing she took after me and has a hard head!!!!

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I have to share something with all you guys right now........get ready for some chills to run up your backs...............my husbands job has been very secure for him, not everyone in the company but he is a very hard worker and can do and will do anything that they ask him to do. Work ethics like that pays off in hard times too. They will find him work when others are begging to get out of working. However I am feeling an erie feeling in the back of my mind about the" what if's". In this horrible economy I am feeling a little selfish because I do have a nursing license and am not putting it to use and I am not contributing to the household finances at all. I am just on the decorating committee and I am the the grounds keeper/gardener, cook, company nurse, bookkeeper, personal shopper, laundry aid, dairy herdsman and many other duties that I can't even think of right now.

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All this time that I have been feeling that way I still wouldn't even think about going back to work. Until last night when I decided to look at our local newspapers online classified. I saw one job that peaked my interest, an office position in a surgeons office only 2 days a week for 8 hour shifts. I did not apply. Just now as I was typing this post, I mean a couple minutes ago in real time.......my phone rang and it was a call from a home health agency that I used to do some part time work for. I am not on their payroll anymore so I wondered what they would want with me.................. It was a new recruiter and he asked me if I had Peds experience...."Yes, inpatient peds and peds ER".....do you have ventilator experience?...."Yes, I worked ICU/CCU with vents".........Do you want a case about 15 miles from your home? Part time or full time? ......................................................................I have an interview tomorrow morning!!!!! I can set my own hours because this is a new case that is being set up!!!!!!!!

Doesn't the Lord work in mysterious ways?

Oh yes I did!

I worked on my quilt for several hours. Ha, I proved you wrong. You didn't think I would
do it. You thought I would just goof off while the weather was pretty today and not get anything accomplished. You thought I would be in Walmart and Lowes all day. You thought I would be sitting around on the sofa watching TV.
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Wrong!!
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1. I took my Christmas tree and all my decorations down today! hehehehe Is that a redneck woman or what? I just had too many other projects going. It was too cold to get the ones down outside, so I just didn't do any of them. Danny wouldn't help me. Let me see if I can come up with some more excuses! I didn't want to tell you that I am a procrastinator!!
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2. I worked on the kitchen floor some more.......filling that ugly crack takes a lot of time to let the putty dry and sand and reapply til it's filled evenly. I told you it was a big one!!
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3. I cooked supper at home tonight! He was a happy camper, too. I do still have pots in my bedroom, kitchen cabinets in my living room (one that wasn't attached to the wall), clean dishes on my dining room table from cabinets, my kitchen island in the pantry.... but all in all it's coming together nicely.
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4. Worked on my quilt for several hours. I just had to get back to the sewing room. I just had too.
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5. Went for a little walk around my place tonight with my hubby. Quite a feat considering how much snow and ice is still here but at least my face didn't freeze!! It was good to get outside!!
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I can now go to bed and feel that I had a "great" day!

I will. I will. I will.

Oh Yes I will work on this for one hour today!

I will.

Don't believe me?

Just watch!!

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I sure hope I can prove you wrong!!

Just me and my MP3....

Got 'er done!!

Finally!!

I have kept my MP3 in my ears for several days now and it sure has helped me to get a big job done while the times just ticked on by!

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FYI~ If you want to find a way to get supper out for two nights running, just paint your kitchen floors! Or just take the stove out of the kitchen and put it in your living room! Hey don't laugh it works!! He bought Italian take out last night and when he came in this evening and saw the turmoil he asked if I could get to some more clothes so we could go to our local cafe/grill for supper..........well of course I could get to some more clothes cause I surely wouldn't be caught dead in public in these paint clothes!!!!

Then when we got home he was upset that he had to help me get the stove back in the kitchen.......I said "Fine, supper out three nights in a row? No problem here."

He grabbed his side of the stove quickly!!! I guess I'll be cooking in my new white kitchen tomorrow!!! Oh Goody!!!!

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Actually, It's not 100% finished. I ran out of my $46 a gallon sealer and I have to make a Lowes trip tomorrow morning. Bummer! I need two more coats on the center of the room. I also have a big crack that I am filling with wood putty where the floors join. It's a crack that is way too big to "add character" .....it adds the....."What the heck happened here look"!!!!!!

I will soon be finished, I hope. Of course there are a lot of touch ups to be done where white paint got on black under the cabinets........makes me sooooo mad when that happens!

Then I have lots and lots and lots of decorating to do!!!!! hehehehe

I promise no more pictures of my white floors til I am finished and there is actually something to see! This just keeps me focused!

Terri, did you notice the enamelware on top of the cabinets? I thought you did!

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For the record my windows are NOT as dirty as they appear in this picture!! They aren't spotless but they look horrible here. OMG!!! Add cleaning windows to my list of to do's!!