on the sewing table • two hearts mug rug

A spin-off of the Sewing Bee at Happiness Comes, which I’ll be rejoining if and when it ever starts up again. Ever in need of accountability, I’ll post my sewing projects (and projects-to-be) here every Thursday most Thursdays. And I invite anyone who wants to join me to post a link in the comments.

On the dining room sewing table…

Back in July, Linda of Natural Suburbia organized her Sending Love Heart Swap. I signed up & was paired with Rae of morning sun rae.

Linda’s intention was for readers to swap handmade “heart-related”  items; they didn’t necessarily have to be heart shaped but would be made with love. When I read her original posting about it, the words heart mug rug popped into my head, and there they stayed, rolling around for a while, until they formed into a design that I could actually use to make something for Rae: A quilted mug rug with two elongated hearts and two little rectangles to square everything up, like so—

I had  a little bundle of fat quarters I’d recently purchased—with pinks and blues and greens and browns, all coordinating very nicely—that I thought would work very nicely for this little project—

Right now is probably a good time to note that, up to this point—with all the sewing I’ve done in my life—I had never before pieced a quilt block. Never mind one I designed myself, which I had no idea whether I’d be able to make fit together the way I wanted it to. I have made nine-patch quilts before, and hand tied them, but that is the extent of my quilting experience. I’d never done any actual quilting before this, either. So if you are an experienced quilter you’re probably going to notice things that look really wonky; if you have any tips for me as I try to gain some experience of my own, I’m more than happy to have them! In the meantime, here is my flailing-in-the-dark attempt at making a quilt block from my own design…

First things first: I’d already purchased a few things to make this whole process easier, in anticipation of making quilts for Julia and Asher one of these days. I bought a set of Tri-Recs and a 1/4-inch foot and walking foot from Close to Home Sewing Center (which, incidentally, I highly recommend to any local folks out there). The Tri-Recs were indispensable in getting the shapes right for the hearts; I tried to make them on my own & couldn’t quite get them exactly right before I remembered that I had these tools in my sewing table somewhere & dug them out.

For each heart, you’ll need two Tris and four Recs cut from 1-1/2-inch strips for the top, and one Tri and two Recs cut from 2-1/2-inch strips for the bottom. I used pink patterned fabric for the heart pieces and white fabric with multicolored flowers for the background.

The Recs tool includes a little notch to cut out of the small end, which is really helpful in lining up the triangle pieces and the side pieces correctly.

I was really anxious sewing the pieces together—and I have to confess that what you are seeing here is actually my second attempt at making this block; the first one simply didn’t work, both in terms of my fabric choice (in the earlier version I’d used the pink-and-white-patterned fabric instead of the pink-on-pink, which was a bad choice) and in terms of the horrendous job I did piecing it together. But this second attempt came together much better—still not perfect, as you’ll see in the pictures below, but not awful. I used my 1/4-inch foot to help me get the seams as accurate as I could.

Each of the three points is pieced separately—

and then sewn together into a rectangular block—

Each heart-motif rectangle should measure 2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches, and you should have two of them.

Next, you’ll cut two rectangles, each measuring 2 1/2 inches by 1 1/2 inches, out of contrasting fabric. I used blue-and-white-patterned fabric for these pieces.

One rectangle piece goes beneath the heart on the right side, and the other goes above the heart on the left side. (Yes, I know it’s the opposite in the photo above; I’m not sure why I laid it out that way…)

Now you have two long rectangle pieces, each measuring 2 1/2 inches by 4 1/2 inches. After you sew them together—one next to the other, as in the photo above—you’ll have a square measuring 4 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches. (Somehow I ended up without a photo of this step.) If things aren’t exactly square, now is a good time to fix that.

Next you’ll cut four strips out of yet another contrasting fabric, this time to frame the square: two strips should measure 1 inch by 4 1/2 inches, and two should measure 1 inch by 5 1/2 inches. Sew the shorter strips on first, then the longer ones. Depending on the pattern in your fabric, it may not matter which you do first; in the case of the fabric I chose, I wanted all the lines to run the same way, and I thought it looked better with the lines running up and down, so I sewed the top and bottom strips on first, then the side strips.

The result is a square measuring 5 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches.

Now it’s time to quilt!

First you’ll need to cut a 5-1/2-by-5-1/2-inch-square piece of fabric for the back—I used the same brown stripy fabric as the frame around the front piece—and a piece of batting the same size. I used Warm & Natural cotton batting, and before placing the top, I sprinkled a half teaspoon of dried lavender on the batting; it will release a nice, relaxing scent when a warm mug is put on top of it.

And…once again…I didn’t get any pictures of this step. I ended up doing the quilting at night, and my dining sewing room has horrible light for photographs even during the day. So all I can share is the finished piece:

I used pink thread (in the needle; I had brown thread in the bobbin for all the quilting, to match the bottom fabric) to machine quilt around the edges of the hearts, and white thread to quilt around the edges of the blue rectangles. The walking foot was a little fussy—that’s what happens, I guess, when you get a cheap accessory for a cheap machine…—but it made the quilting much easier than I expected.

The last step, of course, is binding. I also didn’t get pictures of this step, because I was too busy trying to figure out how to make it work the way I wanted to. (I suppose I could have looked online for a tutorial, but what fun would that have been?) So…I used a bit of the bias tape I made last week, bound it up, and Bob’s your uncle—a lovely little scented mug rug!

P.S. If you like this little design enough to make it, please send me a link so I can see how it came out!

What’s on your sewing table this week?

Edited 3 Sep 11: Linking up with Stephanie’s Saturday’s Artist this week!