Barbecue Set Project

A quick and easy project to make the “barbecue chef” in your life happy is a barbecue apron and oven mitts set. Begin with an apron, either a purchased apron or one you make. They make up quick and easy and allow you to use unique fabric such as the striped fabric depicted in the graphic above. Add an embroidery design of your choice on the apron front and don’t forget if your apron has pockets that suitable designs can also be added to the pockets. This embroidery design shown in the graphic has both lettering and a design. The lettering was done with Embird Alphabet 16 and the design is from the Embroidery Library French Chef package. Add designs for barbeque tools to the pocket and you have a one-of-a-kind chef apron

There are several easy apron patterns and two of my favourites are Kwiksew Pattern 3280 or Simplicity 2937 or you can download a free apron pattern from About.com/Apron project.

Oven Mitts

For each mitt, you need two of fabric, two of lining, two of cotton batting, and two of insulbrite (or additional cotton batting).

1. Trace the outline of an oven mitt on thin paper, stabilizer or interfacing.
2. Add 1/4 inch to the top of the oven mitt for a seam allowance.
3. Cut out the oven mitt pattern.
4. Cut out the fabric pieces for each oven mitt from the pattern.
5. Place one fabric piece , one layer of insulbrite, cotton batting and lining together with the wrong side of the fabric and the wrong side of the lining on the inside of the “fabric sandwich”.
6. Zig-zag stitch around all the edges of each side of the oven mitt fabric sandwich. This keeps the layers even when you sew the two pieces together. It also serves to finish the seams.
7. Optional – Quilt the layers together by topstitching through all four layers. How you decide to do this is a style choice, either straight, diagonal or wavy quilting lines.
8. Any embroidery to be added to the oven mitt should be added to the fabric now.
9. Place the two oven mitt pieces together with the right sides of the fabric facing each other. Starting at the long side, stitch half way around. Use a 1/2″ seam allowance. When you are sewing through the thumb crotch, backstitch before and after the pivot to strengthen the joint. Clip the seam allowance in the lower corner. Finish the seam around to the beginning.
10. Turn the oven mitt and press the top seam flat.
11. Beginning at the top edge of the mitt on the thumb side and leaving a one-inch section of binding at the top edge to turn under, sew seam binding around the outer edges of the mitt.
12. Fold the seam binding extension under at the top thumb side to form a loop for hanging purposes.
13. Repeat for the second oven mitt, being sure to have the embroidery on the opposite side of the second mitt so both designs are visible when they are hung for display.

The oven mitt pattern below can be copied by right clicking on the image and following the prompts to save it. Note that it is 25% of the original pattern size.

There is also a free oven mitt pattern at Burda Style that is a free download that you may want to look into.

Finish off your barbecue set with a personalized towel to hang on the edge of the barbecue for easy reach by the chef. or expand the barbecue set to include coordinated place mats (the triple play placemats are a wonderful idea for outdoor use as you could add a vinyl or plastic back to the reverse side of the placemat) or a tablecloth as well as many other suitable barbecue items. Create your own unique barbecue set and be the toast of the neighbourhood at the next cookout!

This project was a lot of fun to plan and finish, and the end results were well worth the small amount of effort.