Wednesday, April 6, 2011

My First Mug Rug

Last month at our NEMQG meeting we learned a new binding technique.  To help us practice we were all asked to bring a mug rug to bind.  I've been admiring all of the mug rugs I've been seeing out in the blogosphere and Flickr but never really decided to make one, until now.

For this, I finally cut into my stash of hand dyed fabrics.  I've been saving them for a special project, but I had won some fat 16th hand dyed fabrics a while ago and I decided that this was the perfect use for them. 
I cut the purple and orange fabrics in some wavy lines and cut them in half.  I had ironed on some Wonder Under on before cutting and had removed the paper backing.  I was trying this method after seeing Frieda Anderson show this method since she claims she never gets the stray pieces of fabric when cutting this way.  I then ironed the orange and purple fabrics together on the paper backing I had removed before trimming and ironing it onto the green fabric. 

This whole mug rug was an improv project that I experimented with as I went along.  After attaching the purple and orange piece to the green I then cut that down into a wavy piece.

I used my 18mm rotary cutter for this because I had more control and could make the wavy edges better than I could with your standard 45mm rotary cutter.  I would highly recommend that you invest in a small rotary cutter for projects like this.

Once I added the Green I felt like there was still something missing, so I found a nice, bright yellow fabric and placed the piece on top of that.  It really popped and I decided to go with it.
Voila!  At this point I did some quick quilting to get the mug rug ready for the meeting.  I don't have any pictures of that right now, but I'll show some soon.  I just need to get my camera out.  I'm in the middle of hand sewing the binding down to the back, which shouldn't take too long. 

I'm probably going to hang this in my sewing room on the side of my new bookshelf instead of using it as an actual mug rug.  It took a lot for me to cut into my hand dyed stash, and I just can't bring myself to put food or drinks on it.  Maybe some day, but not now.

3 comments:

  1. I love your mug rug. The colors are fantastic and your creation really beautiful. And this is your first! You are in trouble...they are so addictive.

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  2. It looks much better in person!!

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  3. cute little quilt. can relate to not wanting to use up such wonderful fabrics--sometimes i like to just go through my fabrics and none of them are handdyed!! thanks for sharing and have a great day

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