Oven mitts, the awesome and easy way!

Tis the season for cookie baking... which means that my oven mitts are getting a good workout.

I have been finding that in my area, 100% cotton batting is very difficult to get, so when my son wanted a set of oven mitts "like Mom's", I tried a new way to sew them.

Background:
1. I prefer mitts with the liner separate from the cover, so it's easy to wash the cover when it gets messy.
2. In my kitchen, the mitt cover *always* wears out before the heat resistant liner, so now I can just make a new cover when needed.
3. I find it quite hard to find mitts that go far enough up people's arms to keep them safe when they have to reach far into the oven. I have a friend that was constantly burning her arm, until I made her longer mitts.

Liner options I have used:
1. 100% wool sweater that's damaged may have some good areas to upcycle. Wool is both heat resistant, and resists burning. I would use 2 layers.
2. 100%  cotton towel that's stained, but still has good loops and thickness. This is what I used for my son's.

There's a thread about upcycling accidentally felted wool sweaters, with this awesome picture of Inge Leonora-den Ouden's oven mitts:

permies thread

Other liner options: If you want to make your own quilted liner with either wool or cotton, that's an option. Again, I would try to find upcycling options for the material, as it's not going to be seen.
The web talks about using fancy reflective materials, but most of those are made of artificial materials, and from my experience, wear out much faster than my version.

My favorite for a hard waring outer cover is... upcycled 100% cotton jeans:

This is my pair from 5 years ago. One of the two covers is starting to wear through and will need to be patched or replaced, but I consider 5 years a very good score.
The liner inside that mitt, is at least 20 years old, but I did recover the critical area of the thumb and index finger zone with upcycled wool knit at least twice in that time.

However, if you want to go for pretty, I would make the cover out of quilting cotton. You can make it fancier or simpler depending on what appeals to you. If you choose to make a cover out of wool fabric, you will have to be a bit more cautious about washing it. My friend shrank the wool covers I made her.

If any other permies have done this, please post pictures.

that is super awesome! and what a great idea with the liner and the cover being separate, i agree entirely, the cover wears out but it's the inside that is doing the hard work.
It is almost holiday baking season, and every time my husband threatens to go buy me arm gaiters for welders, because it's always my wrists and forearms that get burned. Maybe this year I'll let him.

How many layers of cotton towels should be used gor oven mitts?

    Wow, this post is well-timed for me!  I make "yarn" from old t-shirts, etc. and use it to make throw rugs. I have a bunch of mismatched small balls of that yarn.  I'm recovering from surgery and was bored, so I just quick-crocheted some potholders using the yarn knowing I would need to line/cover them to make them useful.  I'm so excited to read this over a bunch of times and get to work!  
     

Using the jeans/denim is brilliant!

Pamela Scoles wrote:How many layers of cotton towels should be used for oven mitts?

If it's a decently thick bath towel, one layer is plenty.

I've met some "decorative" hand towels that would need two layers.

Some judgement is required. I make sour dough bread in a preheated cast iron Dutch oven. So it's about 450F when I'm lifting it in an out of an equally hot oven, and it's heavy as well.

If you're never lifting anything heavy out of a cooler oven, the thickness is less of an issue, and you just have to make sure the mitts are long enough to protect your arms.