A Mat for Stumpy

When we moved into the new house I decided to retire my old dressing gown. It was tending to be used as a lap blanket mostly anyway. It was Stumpy's favourite.
Rather than just throw it away I cut it up and made a little blanket for Stumpy. My main motivation was him sleeping on my ironing board. I needed to make him a nice place behind my machine.

I cut the biggest rectangle I could get from the front then squared the corners. I cut 2 x 3" strips from some cat fabric. I measured the long side and cut two border strips to size and stitched them on. I then measured for the second two border strips. Such a simple thing, but I had to learn that making the opposite border strips the same length kept my quilt square.

The cat fabric had the cutest selvedge.

I used my trusty 505 basting spray. A few squirts along the borders and a few waves across the middle and press it neatly into place on the backing. I didn't use any wadding. I just cut a second piece of the dressing gown for the backing. No fancy FMQ for the cat. I stitched in the ditch of the borders.

I also stitched around the edges after trimming the backing. I made some single fold binding with my binding machine. So quick and neat. I don't roll it up. I just feed it through by hand and let it fall off the edge of the table as it comes out.

It fits behind my sewing machine. Well, close enough anyway. Now all I have to do is get Stumpy to use it instead of sleeping on the ironing board.

DH and I also worked on some Glassapplique business. We have found a lovely couple who visit all the weekend markets and they love our dichroic glass jewellery. We hope to have a healthy wholesale business with them. Here are some of the pendant sets we made. They are not fine art but they are great at the markets. I will get back to playing with the glass soon.

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Update:

I Love Pie

For some reason I haven't felt like getting the Christmas fabrics out but I have felt the need to applique. I dug out my Two Hour Mini Quilt Projects book and changed the pie design from portrait to landscape. I figure I can share my pie, apple and bird since they are only similar, just not in the same configuration as in the book. It's not that hard to work it out from my finished project photo.

I wasn't completely happy with my choice of the hat fabric for the border but I love the hat fabric and I love the applique so I am happy enough. It looks very handsome on my kitchen counter.
I practiced mitreing the corners of the border.

I cut the backing fabric about two inches bigger then did the quilting and trimmed the backing to one inch. I then folded it in and sewed it like binding. I haven't done this before. I seems to be a good way to finish smaller things.

I downloaded some colouring in letters (saved in my Pinterest) and planned to make a tea towel but it got transformed into a counter mat along the way. I put interfacing on the top half to do the applique then cut a piece of wadding just a bit smaller than the half tea towel. I folded it in half, did some quilting and then sewed two rows around the outside. The tea towel was 3 for $4.99 at Spotlight.

You can download the drawings from my Google docs

It is very hot in Brisbane today. 37 degrees C outside. It got to 30 inside and we have just put the air conditioner on. I nipped outside real quick to get a couple of photos in the sunlight. It was way too hot to play with props. Both these mats are twice as big as a mug rug. I call them counter mats. I need them bigger so I can fit on my mug, my tea pot and my cake plate and sometimes a little tea bag dish to put my tea infuser if I use one.

Happy Quilting,
Val