An Oven Mitt for Small Hands

Are you my mother?

When my mom learned that I was making potholders, she commissioned me to make her an oven mitt.  Her friend Mai has an oven mitt that apparently fits her small hands perfectly, as opposed to those giant mitts that most people have.  So she made a trace of Mai's mitt and sent it to me.

I decided to start with a prototype since I wasn't working with a real pattern or tutorial.  I used some cheap fabric seconds and came up with a pretty decent little oven mitt.  First I quilted the layers of heat-resistant batting, regular batting, and fabric together.  Then I sewed the front and back of the mitt together and made a slightly smaller lining out of a new dish towel I had stashed away in a drawer.  I stuffed the lining into the mitt and covered all the raw edges with a neat little binding.  Binding in a circle was quite a bit harder than I expected.

Well when this was all done I had two problems with the prototype:  the opening was too small and the thumb was too tall.  The opening wasn't too small to put a hand into, but it was definitely more time consuming than a regular big mitt.  

Instead of perfecting my design with another prototype (lazy), I decided to go ahead with the final product with a few tweaks.  I used a bit of pretty fox fabric I bought off etsy, and lined it with the remainder of the dish towel.

The result was better, but not perfect.  The thumb placement still needs work, and the bottom should flare out.  Whatever, I still gave it to my mom and she was pleased.  

I need to decide if this project is worth perfecting or if I should just let it go and focus on tutorials already tried-and-true on the internet.