Potholders, Mug Rugs and More

   

Even though the days here are only a little cooler, I have been thinking fall and holiday projects. The past week I have been busy playing with scraps.  I saw this cute pieced turkey on Lori Holt’s blog Bee in a My Bonnet.   You can see her 12” block here. 

I decided to resize it to 8” for a potholder and made 2.  I placed the first hanging loop in the corner and the second in the middle.  I guess I like the straight hanging one better.  Which do you like?

 The backing fabric is mum like and it looks like fall also so these potholders could be reversed and used for longer. 

  

 I also played a day with fall scraps and pieced the top of 3 more mug rugs. I enjoy giving them as small gifts.

Wednesday was sew day at church.  Martha shared her “Star Gazing” quilt top.  It looks great!  The pattern is from Britney Walsh of Soft Day Quilts.  You can find out more about where to find the free pattern on this post. 

Saturday morning I taught 3 beginning quilters in a class at JoAnn Fabrics.  Kelly finished her 2 blocks and sent me these photos.  Her birthday is Halloween and these are perfect for her and the season.

Enjoy a few minutes each day sewing or quilting!

Scrap Management

     When I am at my home away from home in between painting, spending time with granddaughters or free time, I like to work on scrap management. One type is sewing crumbs together into “made fabric”. I am working on rainbow pieces for a future quilt.  Here is some purple “made fabric”. 

Second type of scrap management is cutting down fabric pieces less than a fat quarter.  I cut strips to 6 ½”, 4 ½”, 3 ½” and 2 ½”.  Strips less than 2 ½” become strings.  Too short to be a string pieces are grouped as crumbs.

I also finished a couple of painting projects during this visit. The bathroom cabinets have a new coat of paint.  Here is a photo of work in progress   

 

 and after.

Enjoy some time sewing and quilting!

Saturday Morning Finish

   I just finished machine sewing the binding on my “Star Gazing” quilt. You can find the free pattern for the lap size quilt on Craftsy. On this post I wrote some about it.

I enjoyed this pattern to learn a new technique for sewing multiple HSTs and stitching on some new free-motion quilting motifs.  I used repetitive lines in half the light diamonds and echoing spirals in the other.  I stitched an S-curve feather in the darker diamonds and meandering on the print because I did not think the design would show up well.

    Now I can work on finishing another project. 

Enjoy some time sewing and quilting!