In honor of National Quilting Month, I give you: a Quilted "Heart" Pad pot holder tutorial! This little hot pad is so easy and fun to make! Let's sew!

You'll need one 2.5" x 44" strip of fabric for binding, two 9" fabric scraps, a 9" square of insulated batting, a fabric scrap for the heart, and fusible applique cut-away stabilizer. You may add an extra layer of regular batting for added plushness, if you desire. I only used one layer of the insulated batting and the pot holder still worked great guarding against heat. You'll also need your sewing machine and these 2 sewing machine feet compatible with your machine are very helpful for this project: the Walking Foot and the Open Toe Foot (for applique).

1. Print and cut out the heart pattern, cut your fabric and fusible applique cut-away stabilizer with the heart pattern.

2. Fuse the heart to the top fabric piece. If you'd like to stitch your applique stitch on now, skip to step 5. I appliqued through all of the layers after channel quilting, it looked really cool too, but, it's a little thicker to sew through.

3. Layer your fabrics: fabric, insulated batting, extra layer of regular thin batting if desired, and the top layer.

4. Draw a line from corner to corner, place your walking foot on your machine and move your needle to the center, and stitch along that line first. I used a 3.0 stitch length.

Then, use the edge of the foot to continue what is called channel quilting (stitching straight parallel lines through quilt layers).

Complete channel quilting, as desired.

5. Then, use your open toe foot and a blanket stitch setting (on my Baby Lock sewing machine my stitch width was at 4 and stitch length at 3.5) to stitch around the edge of your heart.

The back looks really cool too!

I love how it turned out!

6. Square up the quilted fabric.

7. Now, you'll apply the binding. Take your 44" strip and press it in half, lengthwise. You'll follow this tutorial for binding, however, you'll start and finish the binding as shown below. To start, pin evenly at the top left corner (as shown below). Continue with the tutorial for binding at step 10 (skip step 14 of the binding tutorial) and only complete 2 corners and 3 edges (top, right, and lower, see the next 2 pictures).

8. After you've stitched the lower edge, we need to do one thing quickly before stitching the fourth edge. At the top, left corner (just at the corner), you need to flip the binding up and around the edge of the pot holder and...

...stitch it in place along the left edge seam allowance.

9. Then, finish the third corner and fourth edge, as shown below, stitching all the way up the tail of the binding (no need to stop short as you did on your previous 3 corners).

10. Press your binding out (as shown in the binding tutorial, as well). Then, wrap the binding around the edges and press again.

11. Pin and top stitch your binding according to the binding tutorial. Start your top stitching at the top left corner and stitch clockwise all the way around and up the little "tail" that will become the loop. Stitch close to the edge on the "tail."

Front side shown below...

Back side shown below...

12. Fold the loop down even with the top edge of the pot holder.

13. Zig-zag over the raw edge of the "tail" with a stitch width of 3.5 and a .5 stitch length, creating a bar tack/satin stitch, stitching the loop down, completely covering the raw edge of the end.

And, you're done! :)