Stars & Stripes Table Mat

I’ve completed this patriotic table mat in time to enjoy it for a week or so.

The center section is inspired by a painted wood plaque that I saw online somewhere (that I cannot find now to give credit).  I made the design using half square triangles.

From there I gave it borders using more half square triangles.  Then strips of fabric around the outside border.  24” X 24”

I quilted the mat with star shapes.

The stars are all die cut in two sizes then raw edge appliqued.

Hooray for the red, white and blue!

Happy Independence Day, America!

Paper Piecing Fun

I couldn’t seem to get enough of paper piecing with my Chillingsworth quilts.  So I kept on sewing neutral strips.

I have a love for grunge.  But sometimes I don’t like the design of the grunge.  Like on this table top.

I set out to cover it with the paper pieced strips and text sashing.

I love all those precise seams!

I don’t save my empty thread spools these days.  

SO much is plastic in this modern life.

(That is my portable design wall behind this little table)

This mat is very busy for this use and doesn’t make me love it.  At least not for this purpose.  But it will do until I decide on something else.




July’s calendar journal also is not a favorite to look at.  But there’s always next month for aesthetic improvement.

Christmas Table Mat

My table needed a bit of Christmas cheer.

So I decided to make my Christmas Tree pattern into a table mat as a smaller version and complete circle.

As I suspected it would, it worked perfectly.  I followed my own tutorial:  https://freezeframe03.blogspot.com/2011/12/tutorial-christmas-tree-skirt.html

With only minimal changes as I show in this post.

I did not purchase any fabric, I pulled out my Christmas fabric stash for this table mat.

Instead of using 5” Charm packs, I cut 4” squares from my stash.

Instead of stacking 5 charm squares, I stacked only 4 squares.

Instead of aligning the wedge ruler at its 24” measurement, I aligned it at 16-3/4”. Instead of aligning right at the lower right hand corner of the strip, I moved it over by 1/4”.  Had I not moved it over, the two strips would have been too much the same width.  As with my tree skirt, I wanted alternating wide and narrow strips.

As with the tree skirt, I discarded the strip on the right and used the center and left cuts.

The rest of the circle construction follows the tree skirt tutorial.

Of course I didn’t want a hole in the center of my table mat so I had to fill that in.  I have these handy dandy circle cutting rulers.  They work like magic for cutting a perfect circle.



I sewed a long stitch around the circle then pulled the threads for a slight gather to make it easy to turn under the edge.

I pressed the edge under.

Lay out the mat so the center opening is as round as you can make it.

I then pinned the heck out of it so that the mat opening would not shift while I just top stitched the circle in place.

That worked well enough.

Since I won’t see this slightly imperfect opening once it’s quilted, I have completely forgotten it isn’t perfect.  It is not at all noticeable.  You know I’m loving that!

I have a layer of Warm & Natural batting and a backing.  I just quilted in the ditch.  (My tree skirt does not have batting as I wanted it to be very drape-able).

I sure wondered why I had so much of this fabric, but some has been put to good use here and the Christmas fabric drawer does not bulge any more.  (Room for some new pieces, right?!)

The binding is, as always for me, cut on the straight grain.  I avoid bias bindings at all cost.  LOL

I LOVE this table mat.  It measures 33.5” diameter.

There were squares leftover (because I just cut a strip then cut the strip into squares).  Too lazy to figure out exactly how many squares I needed.  So this second table mat or runner was made with the scraps.

The back looks kind of pretty too.  Bonus!

It sits so nicely on my little bench by the door.  I think it just needs a few little wrapped gifts added to it.



I love that I bought NOTHING to make these.

Merry Christmas to all my bloggy friends!

Fall Table Mat

From the leftovers of the orange and black Recliner Quilt I made a Fall table mat.  The borders, binding and backing also came from my stash.  Nothing new was purchased to complete this mat.

As I am trying to use what I have and reduce the scraps stash, I pieced together enough scraps of batting for the table mat.

When I need an invention made, my son-in-law is talented enough to make them a reality.  I struggle with these thread spools standing on end while sewing as my machine struggles to pull the thread from the bottom of the spool.  Well, we don’t have that problem anymore!

Wha-la!



And now it is time for some Christmas sewing.

Here in the United States we are celebrating Thanksgiving this week.  We will cook and stuff ourselves on Thursday.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Nail Polishing Mat

I have done a small bit of very simple basic sewing!  

My cousin-in-law and I got together and had a few hours of a private mini sewing retreat.  We made fabric boxes.  But that was all it took to get me into the sewing mood again.

My daughter has a fetish for nail art.  Her nail polish collection can rival any store display.  It really is fun.  She normally puts down an old towel or just paper towels to protect her table surface from any mishaps with those oh-so-pretty little bottles of color.  When I saw this fabric, I could not resist making her a fun surface to work on.

Personally I think if she gets some polish smudges on the mat it will only add character.  

This was only the beginning to more sewing of a few more small pieces that are still being worked on played with.  For me, sewing is play, never work.

Blooming Dresden

Table Mat

I'm not the biggest fan of the Dresden plate.  I don't dislike it but it isn't a favorite design.  However, I really like playing with the Dresden ruler wedge lately.

For this piece I traced the 8" ruler wedge.  Shrank the tracing with my printer to 3 different sizes plus a partial wedge. 

I fused the pieces to the background and stitched them down with a raw edge applique technique.  Easy peasy!  The binding is not bias, it's straight grain.  I don't like doing bias if I don't have to.

This piece is another make with this fabric collection for a personal challenge.  Other pieces can be seen in my flickr photostream here. 
Confession:  One fabric piece is not part of this fabric collection but I didn't want to keep repeating too many of the prints to make enough wedges so I just added one more print to the collection.  Is that cheating?  Maybe I can't count it in that challenge.

I've made a couple of table mats for my daughter and she said she'd like to have "some" more.  I'll have to send this to her eventually, but right now I just can't part with it.  I like it and want to enjoy it for awhile before I package it up and send it off. 

Now I can get back to work on my "Man Quilt" that I started back in January.  It's ready to quilt...I'm always so excited when a quilt is ready to be quilted.  See ya ~

Annie

Four Leaf Clovers?

A funny thing happened on the way to Pillow #4.

It didn't become a pillow.  It was too big.  I don't want any pillows that are larger than 18".  But that isn't the funny thing. 

You see that "Rocket" fabric outside the twisted pinwheels?...when I bought that fabric I saw black and white and I saw that luscious green and I saw numbers and not a once did I see a rocket!  Not a one!  There's a rocket every 2" all over this fabric piece!  <~~That's the funny thing.  What?...you were expecting hilarious?

Well, now what am I going to do with this stupid piece of fabric that I'm now mad at for having stupid rockets on it!  And it's been in my way and laughing at me and haunting me ever since!

Noticing it, I pulled it out thinking, oh, what a fun piece to border these pinwheels with...that I decided I would call four leaf clovers for a March, St. Patrick's Day theme.  Then I saw the stupid rockets and was reminded all over again how I hate this piece of fabric!

Then I took another look at it.  This design made with the Little Twister tool is called twisted pinwheels.  I see them as whirligigs.  And I visualise them spinning around in the air.  Which is where a rocket goes...up in the air.  I decided the rockets, the count-down numbers and the green words "blast off" all fits nicely with whirligigs.  See how nicely I forced this hated fabric to go with my twisted design...it's how my twisted mind works.  I'm awfully determined sometimes.  Yep, the four leaf clovers don't work into this scenario any more.

Now, yay!...I'm using this fabric...getting it out of my stash.  this project is still a pillow at this stage, so I'm already planning ahead for the back of the pillow.  I'll make an extra whirligig and I'll fussy cut the words "blast off".......you guessed it...I didn't have enough fabric left to get those large "blast off" words for the pillow back!!!  I hate this fabric again

In the end, the piece was too large for a pillow so it's a table mat.  I just couldn't know what size it would come out to once it was chopped up and resewn.  And I did my best to use up the rest of the rocket fabric on the back...I kind of like how the back looks.  That hated fabric makes an interesting design pattern.  I just keep shaking my head...rockets...

The whirligig centers needed a little something I thought, and these tiny buttons worked out the best of everything I tried.
There are only 25 buttons.  A mere sampling compared to Carol..*snicker*
They don't really seem to be the answer now that they're on, but I haven't had anything else come to mind yet.  I'll just wait.

I'm not calling this one a success but I'm so glad I finally got to play with the Little Twister tool I bought ages ago.  I love this twisted design but I didn't think it was fun cutting out the twisted blocks so I'll most likely never make anything larger than a pillow or table mat in this design.  But I'm glad I've made it at least once...so far.

Have a fun blogging day!

Annie

Ghastlie Inspiration Projects

Welcome to this Ghastlie Blog Hop

Madame Samm one day said, "let's have a Ghastlie Blog Hop" (or something like that), so here we are, doing just that!  How fun!

My project ideas started with this Ghastlie Tea Party

Which is right now currently serving up a tutorial over at Sew We Quilt.  I'm over there giving away all my little secrets for rubber stamping on fabric.  It's quite easy and extremely fun...check it out when you're finished here.  You can find my paper piecing tutorial and this fun border stripe tutorial over there on the right side of my blog listed under Tutorials.

I can't really even take credit for this next project.  In my tutorial  for that fun stripe border I showed how I use one of my mug rugs as an ironing pad while I do small paper pieced projects using my "iron on a stick" for pressing the seams.  Madame Samm honed right in on that!  So this ghastlie ironing pad (larger than a mug rug) is for right next to your sewing machine for those mini pressing jobs...well, soon it will be right next to Samm's machine for her mini pressing jobs.

Next, is a mug rug for your mug and snack.  Somehow I've ended up with an extra mug rug so, when you make comments here today and you mention you'd like to have this mug rug,

you will have a chance to win this ghastlie mug rug...and I doubt that it will travel alone.  In fact, it will travel with this ghastlie postcard of the Ghastlie Knitters.

And here is finally my quite involved Ghastlie project that is still a work in progress.  I've no clue what possessed me to create this tedious applique monster.  Yes, every letter is individually cut and raw edge appliqued to the background.  It had to be done, I'd already decided.  All the while stitching I kept wondering what I was punishing myself for.

Each character was cut from the orange background fabric and fused to that fun thin line black and white fabric and again, raw edge appliqued. 
It's a 36" circle and intended as a table mat.  I suppose it could be placed on the floor as well, but I don't at the moment have a floor that nobody walks on.  This is not the design that I started out with.  That one didn't work out.  So, this one is still evolving...there will yet be some bats and pumpkins for color and maybe another bird, and after that...well, who knows at this point.  I just keep plugging along with it.

The ghastlies are not necessarily a Halloween themed fabric, but that's how they always play out in my mind.  They live amongst us every day, but they really fit in during our Halloween fun.

Now don't forget if you leave a comment here for me, I will draw one name to send over to Madame Samm to enter in today's grand prize drawing on her blog and I'll draw another name as the winner of my Ghastlie mug rug and postcard.

I'd love it if you'd add yourself to my collage of followers at the top of my blog...you'd look so cool up there!

Here is today's ghastlie line up of blogs to hop:

                          Mrs. Annie Ghastlie (You are here) 

Mrs Doris Ghastlie

Mrs Brandie Ghastlie

Ms. Alidiza Ghastlie

Mrs. JudyC Ghastlie

Have a ghastlie good time on this Ghastlie Blog Hop!
Thank you so much for visiting today.