Mug rugs

Recently I became intrigued by "mug rugs" I saw online and in magazines.  If you do not know, mug rugs are simply a small placemat to place a mug and a "treat" on.  While playing around with some scraps and trying to create my own "in the hoop" quilt block, I started, but never finished two placemats out of Halloween material.  I just love Halloween!  They never got any bigger than about 7 x 10 inches - too small for much of anything.  So, finally I turned them into two "mug rugs".  One I have on my desk at work and the other I gave to a co-worker.  She loved it (she also Loves Halloween!).

 

I'm going to try to make a few more mug rugs for our office United Way "auction" in October.  

Retired Educator Luncheon coming up!

     Another school year starting and another Retired Educator Luncheon approaches -this Friday.  Hubby will give this away to one of the teachers.  I'll also embroider a golf shirt as a gentlemen's prize.  

If added a little label of my own - cute or corny??

(T2 was derived from a childhood nickname my grandmother always called me.)

At Long Last.....

I thought about titling this "What did I get myself into?"  Or more accurately, "what did my lovely daughter get me into?"  But now that it's finally done, I guess it doesn't matter.  

I made a memory quilt for my daughter out of a number of her high school and college T-Shirts and soon after had two bags of t-shirts from her friend and her husband.  I finally finished the one for her friend.  And with extra "blocks", I also threw together a quick bag to put the Memory Quilt in.   Now to just get it i the mail on its way to them.....

New Machine- first fruits

I just purchased a Brother 6700D - a beautiful full feature machine I'm just learning to use.

The bag below is the first thing I made on the new machine.  Like my other bags so far, this one had a home even before it was started.   A lady in the hubby's office - the A with "Orioles" on it if for the school in a nearby town where she lives and her husband works. 

The shirt is a new feature on this machine - you can print a back ground image on transfer paper, iron that on your material or garment, then stitch parts of the scene "ready made" programed to fit right on the background. This particular one is kind of intricate - 45 color changes, 96 minutes - I probably won't try that one again. And finally, the denim bag - I created the CC - Cottey College applique and added it to the bag. Cottey, being my Alma Mater, and a local girl is on her way there this fall - a few area alumna are gathering together to wish her well and give her a few things to take with her. 

It's been an awful long time - but I haven't been totally inactive during my hiatus from posting anything.   Here are a couple of the things I've completed, though there are a few more in progress.....


These wine bags were fun and easy.  I made them to dress up a couple of bottles of wine going to a fund raiser.

This bag is in Japan now.  It was given as a gift to one of our visiters from Motegi.

A true original - for my friend.

This one just developed over time.   I wanted to make a bag for my friend who likes orange (and white) - I had in my head to make the pieced body front and back and started by cutting three fat quarters into varying width strips to piece together as you see in the picture.  Then as I stitched the bag together  I didn't like the height it appeared the bag would end up so after playing with the bag body - flipping this over here and folding that over there, I decided to make the flap and cut the bag and lining accordingly.  Then as I stitched the lining to the bag I stitched right along the quilting lines at the flap edge resulting in the scalp edge on the flap.  I really like that.  And finally trying to decide how to hold that flap down, I had already sewn the tab, originally expecting to just pull the tab from the back top to the front to button, so I worked that inbetween the layers of the middle of the flap then covered a large button with some of the quilted fabric I had cut from the bag when making the flap.  So, the entire point of this whole narration?  This is truly a one of a kind bag - no pattern used and I doubt I could duplicate it again.