Mug Rug and Goodies

I've been indulging in quite a bit of selfish sewing of late, those germs I thought I had turned out to be Glandular Fever :( So I've been very tired and the thought of trying to wrestle with my Across the Sea quilt just makes me sleepy so the quilting will have to wait a little longer there.

I have been working on small projects because I simply cant NOT sew, I am sure that would me me even more poorly haha! So getting my mug rugs done for my swap partners seemed like the prefect idea.

This being my first swap, I spent quite some time researching their tastes, stalking through their blogs and flikr profiles. Partner 1 gave me some interesting colour choices (mainly because my stash was virtually devoid of all of the colours she mentioned!) This is what I came up with.

There is a sneaky clue as to who it may be for with the initial on the rug, hope it doesn't give too much away! I really enjoyed planning this out and love the texture of the quilting. I cant stop stroking it but I guess I will have to as it needs to leave me soon and wing its way to its new home. As for the goodie to go with it, my partner popped a picture of a Needle book and a pincushion on her like mosaic, so instead of picking one to make I decided to make both! Well after all they go together don't they?!

For the pincushion I just used eight 2" squares and a couple of vintage buttons. You'd be amazed at home much wadding went in there though! (Apologies to the wee yellow birdies for being stabbed with pins!)

For the needle book I used this tutorial from Kelly Rachel, its really straightforward and easy to follow. Here is the back, how cute??!



And the inside, there are 2 pieces of felt, giving you four 'leaves' to pop your needles onto. The tutorial used one piece of fabric for the inside, I decided to piece mine so I was able to incorporate a couple of my partners colour choices. All I did was divide the pattern piece into 4 and add a 1/4 inch seam allowance into the edges of the pattern I had cut along, then cut the fabric using my new pattern pieces and joined the seams.

I think my partner will love them, judging from the feedback in the flikr group. If you want to see lots more goodies and rugs, have a look at the group here.

I'm off to finish up sewing the binding on Partner 2's rug whilst Baby J is still sleeping, I'll leave you with some pictures of my rainbow scrappy quilt that Ive promised for a while!

Scrappy Rainbow Quilt

August 2011

2" scrappy squares and log cabin border.

Quilted with rainbow lines and bubble quilting on border.

Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 Wadding.