Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Hummingbird Mug Rug

Hummingbird Mug Rug
Hello friends! I'm having a wonderful day catching up on things and watching Jenna paint at her easel. I thought I'd take a minute and tell you how this little mug rug came about.
Hummingbird Mug Rug Front
When I was visiting my family this summer, my sister Viv and I had such a great time window shopping, going to the AQS quilt show, and visiting an amazing scrapbook store all in Knoxville. I think the best time though, was sitting in her kitchen visiting, drinking coffee and sewing while our girls played. Viv has become quite the quilter herself and she was so generous to give me scraps from her Hushabye quilt. She also had a stack of fabric in her stash that was just beautiful and I oooohhed and awwwed over it. I think they might be Monaluna prints. Before I left, she cut a strip from each of those fabrics for me to take home!
Hummingbird Mug Rug Back
They've been sitting on my shelf for almost 6 months and I take them out every once in a while to look at them and remember what a great time we had. It finally dawned on me that one of the little mug rugs that are all the rage over on Flickr would be perfect for these strips and I could send it to my sister to enjoy.

I experimented quite a bit on this project. Instead of graphing everything out with measurements, I just guessed and cut. I discovered I still need my graph paper! It was the first time I used my walking foot on my Bernina and it was a dream. I also tried a 2 inch binding instead of my usual 2 1/4. I thought it would be nice to have a thinner binding on such a small project. I ended up struggling a bit to get it around the edges and quickly let go of the idea that I would experiment with machine binding. It was very quick to hand stitch the binding though and I still very much enjoy it. I did discover that it's smart to start the binding on a longer side.
Hummingbird Mug Rug - close
So I mailed it off Saturday and hopefully Viv is too busy during the week to read this because I don't think it will get to her until tomorrow. I'm excited to surprise her with something unexpected!

That little blue hummingbird on the brown background is one of my favorites.  I saved back a few little scraps for me to use in something later, so we'll see where it might turn up.

4 comments:

Charlestongrl said...

Hello sis! I love my mug rug...it is so beautiful and just what I needed to set my new sugar bowl and creamer that you guys got me for Christmas! You are so talented! I can't wait to come out to see you and shop and shop and go to Milton's and shop and shop and get one of those little cakes...thank you for my beautiful gift...

Charlestongrl said...

btw....what's in the mug...sure looks good

Amy-Butterfly Angels said...

This is beautiful!!! I love looking at all of the rugs and deciding how my next ones should look. Your sister is a lucky lady!

Melissa said...

Thanks Viv! I'm so glad you like it. We are on for Miltons. And good news...Dave's Blend coffee is back. You might want to splurge on just one cup. My cup is holding Suisse Mocha International Coffee.

Amy, thank you so much! (And I'm actually the lucky one. She's a pretty cool sis)

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