Tutorial - Seasonal Mug Rug

Hi everyone:

Charlie is still recovering from the Christmas holidays

In a previous post I showed you some of the Christmas gifts that I made this year, but there were more. Yes, I made gifts for my office co-workers at school. I made something I've never attempted before - mug rugs! Easy and simple, right? I could whip these up quickly since they were small. But … I had to make 4 (I ended up making 6 so we could have 2 at home) and … I wasn't content to just use Christmas fabric since that would be practical and easy. Yes, I can complicate any project - and I usually do! 

I had some seasonal charm pack fabric in my stash and while I could've just used a different charm square for each tree, which would be the quick and easy method, I decided to piece them together to make the design more interesting. Remember that complication thing I mentioned? Well, you can see how this project started to "snowball" and took me a bit longer than I thought it would. 

Here's how I made them.*

Seasonal Mug Rug Tutorial

• Choose your charm squares and cut them in 4 - you'll have 4 - 1¼" x 5" strips from each charm square. You'll need 8 charm squares for each "tree" (8 - 1¼" x 5" strips).

• Piece 8 strips together to create a rectangle for 1 tree. Piece the extra strips together to create 3 more rectangles. 

• Cut a long triangular shape approximately 6½" x 3" from freezer paper. Ensure that the height of the triangle is shorter than the height of the pieced charm square rectangle and that the width of the triangle is less than the width of the charm square rectangle. Centre and press the freezer paper triangle to the charm square rectangle.

• Cut a rectangle from background fabric to the desired size. My background fabric was 10" x 8", which gave me extra fabric so I could trim it later.  

• Place the charm square rectangle with the freezer paper triangle onto the background fabric, arranging it where desired. I put mine on the right side of the background fabric, about ½" in from the edges.

• Lay your ruler along the right edge of the freezer paper triangle and cut through both the charm square rectangle and the background fabric. Ensure that you cut from the top to the bottom of the background fabric.

• Repeat for the left side of the freezer paper triangle. 

•  The background fabric will now be cut apart and there will be a triangle of background fabric as well as a triangle from the charm square rectangle. Remove the freezer paper from the charm square triangle (notice how it has gone from a rectangle to a triangle - that's higher math!). You can reuse this freezer paper to cut out the rest of the "trees" for the other mug rugs. I haven't yet decided how I'm going to use the background fabric triangle - lots of possibilities there. You won't need it for the mug rug, so put this aside for another project.

•  Now to start stitching things back together! Place the charm square triangle right sides together with one of the background fabric pieces. Ensure that you have these the right orientation and piece them together. The tip (narrowest part) of the triangle will be with the widest edge of the background fabric piece and the bottom (widest part) of the triangle will be with the narrowest edge of the background fabric piece. Press to the background fabric. Stitch the opposite side of the triangle to the remaining piece of background fabric and press.

•  You should now have a raw mug rug that looks something like this. You can now trim it up so all edges are even.

• Layer the mug rug as follows: batting; top, right side up; and backing, wrong side up and then stitch around, leaving an opening to turn the mug rug. Turn the mug rug right side out, pushing out all the corners. Stitch the opening closed with a whip stitch. The mug rugs are looking pretty good, but they still need a little more interest.

• Now it's time for the fun part - adding embellishment to the mug rug. As I was running behind on mine, I decided to keep it simple (a surprise, I know!) and I stitched in the ditch around the tree on each mug rug and then added a decorative feather stitch around the outside edge. If you wanted, you could add words, such as "Joy" or "Noel" on the background fabric with fusible web appliqué. I would caution against using many 3-D embellishments, such as buttons as you want these flat so they can be used for - a mug and goodies. 

This is a great project for last minute gifts and the perfect time to try using out some of those decorative machine stitches that you have on your machine and have never tried. I know I can't be the only one who doesn't use these very often! Another embellishment idea would be to stitch rick rack along the edge or couch decorative threads in a design. You could do some quilting in the background area, but these are so small that I don't think you need more than the stitch in the ditch around the tree and some decorative machine stitching, but I'll leave that decision to you.

Have you ever made mug rugs? What is your favourite pattern for these?

*These were inspired by a video for a tree table runner that I saw from Missouri Quilt Company. 

Batting, batting, everywhere!

Hi everyone:

Recently I was spending some quilty time with my buddy, Lee of Lala's Lovelys, and she was commenting that she had lots of batting scraps left over from quilting projects. Like me, Lee had bags of small bits and strips of batting that were hanging around not being very productive. Now, that may be okay in my studio (I have lots of bags and boxes of various items not being productive), but Lee uses up just about everything, so a use for these battings bits had to be found!

So, I put my thinking cap on (had to readjust it a time or two) and tried to come up with some uses for these batting leftovers. Here's what I created:

Yup, 30 seconds of thinking came up with these little bunny pincushions/ornaments. Here's how I did it:

Take one sock - I used a small child's sock - you know, the kind that have the little rubber bits on the bottom so they won't slip. Any size would do, you just might need to fill it with more batting. 

One baby or small sock

Go through your leftover batting pieces until you find a strip that is approximately 3" wide by 20" long. You're actually looking for a strip of batting that will fit inside the sock, so the size isn't really crucial, but try to find a continuous strip, if possible. 

Batting strip

Once you've got your strip, roll it up into a ball. 

Roll 'er up

Take the ball and stuff it up into the sock until the batting ball is completely inside the sock with the bottom of it even with the sock opening (this will eventually be the bottom of the bunny, but it is really the top of the sock). 

Batting roll going into sock

Batting roll all in sock

 Pull up the excess sock toe and tie a knot in it. 

Twist sock toe over ...

and pull through to form knot

Pull out the toe of the sock as this will be the bunny ears. 

Bunny ear from knot

You can now squeeze and pull the batting ball and ears until they are just right. 

Tweaking the ears

If you like, you can add a button for an eye or even embroider a small eye. 

This little bunny can be used as a pincushion or just as a cute ornament in your sewing room. This is a great way to use up those gently used socks and extra batting bits. 

Charlie and new sock friends

If bunny starts to get a bit thin, just add more batting to him or change out the batting strip for a new one - I'm sure you will have accumulated more by then!

What do you do with your excess batting bits and strips? I'd love to hear your suggestions.

Studio Set-up - new video series

Hi everyone:


I've finally gotten all the bugs and glitches out of the videos in my latest series. It's taken a little longer than I would've expected, but now Studio Set-up is ready for release. 


Whether you're quilting on your dining room table or have an entire room devoted to your hobby obsession, you'll find lots of helpful ideas in this series for setting up an efficient and organized quilt studio. 

If you have any specific questions about how to set up or improve your quilt studio, I hope you'll leave a comment for me. I do try to respond to everyone. If you're brave enough to send me a photo of your quilt studio, I'd love to see it. 


I'm also looking for comments on the ideal quilt studio. Please leave a comment letting me know what your perfect quilt studio would contain.


Happy quilting!

A Pressing Issue

Hi everyone:


I don't know about you, but I find that it's sometimes difficult to press my fabrics on my ironing board. It's just the wrong shape. It should be rectangular and long enough so I can open up my fabric and press across the width of fabric, not the funny recta-triangle shape of a typical ironing board. I could, of course, purchase a specialty ironing board, but I really don't want to spend that much money on one. So, I decided to make one myself.

If you'd like to make yourself a portable pressing board, you'll need:


Piece of OSB or melamine in the desired size (I used melamine and it was 24" x 48")
Cotton batting (don't use a poly blend, just good old cotton batting, such as Warm and Natural)
Cotton fabric
Gripper shelf liner
Staple gun


First, I cut out two strips of the gripper shelf liner, wide enough to cover the width of the melamine (24" in my case) and about 10" wide and then stapled one strip to the top part of the melamine, on the back, and the other strip to the bottom of the melamine, on the back. This will help keep the board in place, on your counter, on your cutting table, wherever you decide to put it.

Close up of gripper shelf liner

Gripper shelf liner strips attached to back of melamine board

Next, I laid the melamine on the floor and measured and cut out batting in a size sufficient to cover the right side of the melamine (the side that you'll be ironing on) and wrap around to the back on all sides. You don't need too much overlap, but enough so all the sides will be covered and the batting should overlap the gripper shelf liner slightly. I then flipped the board over so the batting was under it and stapled the batting to the back of the melamine, mitering the corners as I went.

Batting measured and partially stapled to back of melamine board
Note that the batting covers one raw edge of the gripper shelf liner

Detail of mitered batting corner

Okay, so far, so good. I then did the same thing with the cotton fabric. I used an older fabric that I had in my stash and probably was never going to use in a quilt project, but it was perfect for this.

Batting all stapled down; cotton fabric being measured

I wrapped the fabric around the "right" side of the board and then stapled it to the back of the melamine. Make sure that you pull the fabric taut when stapling it.

Cotton fabric stapled to back of melamine board

Detail of mitered fabric corner

Wow, that was easy! Now I had a perfect ironing board: long enough to allow me to iron the fabric across its width and portable so I could iron anywhere in the house. I really liked how the gripper shelf liner kept the board in place without shifting when I was ironing. 

Finished pressing board, already in use!
Notice the sad, not-used-anymore ironing board in the background

If you need a new pressing surface, this project can be completed in less than an hour. The best part - it cost less than $20.00 and cleared out more of my fabric, which is always a good thing!