How to Make an Oven Mitt for Kids

Make a kid-sized oven mitt for creative play.

If you want to introduce your children to kitchen safety, start by making them oven mitts to wear when they play culinary make-believe games. Children can use the custom-sized mitts to model good kitchen practices, wearing them to remove "hot" items from a play oven or when lifting the lid from a pot filled with imaginary cooked food. You don't need to be an expert crafter to create an adorable kid's oven mitt.

Things You'll Need

• Paper
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Wool felt
• Pins
• Cotton batting
• Needle
• Embroidery thread

Instructions

1. Place the child's hand on a piece of paper and have him slightly fan out his fingers and thumb. Trace around his hand to create a mitten-like shape and allow him to remove his hand from the paper.

2. Cut out the mitt shape, leaving a 1/2-inch border around the traced outline. This will serve as your kid's oven mitt pattern template.

3. Fold a piece of wool felt in half and pin down the pattern template. Insert a pin every inch around the perimeter of the template and through both layers of felt. Cut around the template to make the mitt's front and back. Make two oven mitt shapes from thin cotton batting using the same method as for the mitt front and back.

4. Sandwich the two pieces of batting between the oven mitt front and back. All four shapes should line up, and the thumbs should face in the same direction. Pin the four pieces together, inserting a pin every inch along the perimeter of the mitt. Turn the mitt so the thumb sticks out from the right side.

5. Thread a needle with embroidery floss in a color that complements the wool felt, knot the end and sew around the border of the mitt with blanket stitch. Begin sewing at the mitt's bottom right-hand corner, work up and around the thumb shape, around the hand shape, and down to the lower left-hand corner. Leave the bottom of the mitt open. To begin your blanket stitch, sew from the back of two top layers of material to the front, about 1/4 inch from the edge. Sew back through all the layers 1/4 inch from the initial stitch and pull the embroidery floss through until it forms a small loop on the front of the mitt. Insert your needle through the loop from back to front and pull until the top of the loop sits along the top edge of the mitt. Continue working in this manner, sewing through all four layers of fabric.

6. Seam together the front of the mitt and one piece of batting with blanket stitch and repeat for the back of the mitt and the other piece of batting.

Tips & Warnings

• If you want to embellish your kid's oven mitt, cut shapes such as hearts, circles and stars from wool felt in complementary colors and stitch them to the oven mitt using blanket stitch.

• Let kids sew their own oven mitts. This craft project is easy enough for children who are at least 6 years old to complete. Substitute sharp embroidery needles for blunt tapestry needles; if children have trouble sewing through the fabric, you can punch guideline holes along the perimeter of the fabric with a leather awl.

References

• "Sewing With Felt: Learn Basic Stitches to Create More Than 60 Colorful Projects"; Buff McAllister; 2003
• Perestroika Designs: Hand Stitching