mug mats: the perfect quick quilt

Mug mats are useful. Of course. This is how to market them. But bottom line: Mug mats are small quilts, a joy for the quilter. In the old days, when I made quilts, I loved designing a block, cutting it, sewing it, and then I had to force myself to finish a big quilt of block after block. The colors, shapes and combinations of patterns are what interested me then, and still do.

The perfect answer to this craving to design something new: mug mats. Make one, it's done. Now on to the next!

The floral white and black in the center is the same as in Genevieve's quilt,
from a thrift store skirt.

This mat has upholstery fabric (charcoal gray with vines
and beige linen moiré, both given by my sister Nancy),
and new buttery and gray dot fabrics I bought

I really love combining fabrics from different sources. This one has fabric: from my 1970s-80s stash; an old farm skirt; gifts from friends and family; and a couple of new ones I bought.

Ninety-eight percent of my fabric stash is patterns and prints. I am very drawn to minimal quilts, believe it or not, but when it comes to designing, I keep going to prints. My next challenge to myself is to design minimal quilt mats, more like the beige and charcoal gray one above.

Let's see how I do. :-)

UPDATE:

I made two minimal abstract mats today, so let's call this rising to the challenge. :)

This linen is heavy. It was a dream to sew, until I got to the binding.
I won't ever bind with such heavy fabric again if I can help it.
Still, I LOVE this linen and will make many more things with it.
My sister Nancy gave it to me.

The back of the linen mat is a fabric long in my stash,
but I cannot remember for the life of me where it came from.
Nancy, no doubt.

Nancy gave me this dotted upholstery fabric, and also the red cotton,
which looks like batik. The dotted fabric looks much richer in person.
I was stymied about how to quilt it,
because I didn't want to detract from the simplicity of the design.
In the end I kept it simple with four squares.

Nancy gave me this linen toile, just delicious.
I paired it with the dots, which she gave together,
and they are perfect paired, even if one is on the front
and one is on the back.
I love Chinoiserie.

Arles placemats

My second commission (!) was for eight placemats in Provençal colors. I had all the fabrics on-hand from other projects, but I needed to purchase more turquoise and white dots for the binding.

Improvising the design for each mat is a heavenly task. I get into Zen mode and let the fabrics tell their story.

The tangerine linen comes off brighter in photos than it truly is.

The story on the backs is simpler.

mat backs

With fabrics as fun as this linen toile, stories are easy to imagine. It doesn't hurt that I lived in Istanbul. My sister Nancy gave me the linen toile with sultans and also the red toile with French scenes.

mat backs

Do you recognize the tangerine linen from Inge's dress? If so, thank you for paying attention. :)

Even the red and white dots were in Inge's dress, in the Hong Kong seams.

I machine quilted every 5/8".

See the little peek of plaid from Bootsie & Astrid's placemat backs?

The person who ordered these placemats did not want napkins. If you were to order napkins for this set, what fabric would you choose?

Etsy listing here.

"Rose and her sisters"

I finished the first quilt for my etsy shop (not launched yet), which I call "Rose and her sisters." I feel excited about my goal for the shop: to create homemade modern improv quilts from 100% repurposed fabrics and fabric scraps.

This quilt really expresses my aesthetic. It has an old world feel, with deep, rich tones and lots of close quilting. It has the colors and feel of a tapestry. The toile linen in the two panels of "Rose and her sisters" was leftover from a chair recovering project. More about the quilting in a minute. The brown mini-floral is from my fabric stash and must be thirty years old. The large cabbage rose print is from a Ralph Lauren dust ruffle my sister Nancy gave me long ago. I never used it as a dust ruffle. It is a beautiful soft cotton with the sheen of chintz.

This could also be "Ruth and her sisters" since I have three sisters.

I sewed straight line quilting on all the panels and strips except for the two toile panels with ladies, which I free motion quilted. The sisters remind me of characters in a George Eliot novel, maybe that's because I'm reading Middlemarch now.

I can picture Miss Brook sitting in Mr. Brook's library reading with this quilt on her lap. All my quilts will probably be this size: 65" x 43 1/2" or so, perfect for laps, naps, thrown on a bed, sofa, or porch swing.

I only learned about improv quilts recently, since getting back into quilting. Back in the 1980s I only pieced traditional quilts (log cabins, lone stars, traditional blocks). When I started following Pinterest quilt boards recently, I discovered the exciting world of improv piecing. (My Pinterest quilts board is here with inspiration galore.) No measuring or straight lines. Just cut and create as you go. This is so satisfying for me and feels just right. You can see the wonkiness of the four brown bars in the full top below, like tree trunks or fence posts in the ladies' rose garden.

Cutting up the fabric into strips this way deconstructs the elegance of Ralph Lauren's world and puts it back together with an embrace of folk art, of women who for centuries have used what they had to create beauty for themselves and their family. She may think the sumptuous life of toile ladies is gorgeous, but she will probably never attain it. She'll piece together what she can.

The back of the quilt is pieced with more scraps, mostly from my 1980s stash. The rose print on the top right was another gift from Nancy, an upholstery linen. The deep red and the olive green were scraps from Henry's quilt and my granddaughter's quilt (due to be born Thursday!).

You know how they say you should follow your passion and see if you can find someone to pay you for it? Well, that's what I'm about these days. It will be thrilling when someone decides they need to own this quilt.

For the binding I chose the same olive green I used for my granddaughter's quilt. I wanted a bright contrast.

Now a bit about the quilting. I stitched straight lines on the strips and panels, except for the linen toile. I alternated horizontal lines with vertical from panel to panel for interest. Because the fabric is flowery, I wanted straight lines as a balance. The great news is that the walking foot worked very well on my old Singer! I still didn't get it to fit just right (it knocked a little), but it breezed over the layers without a pucker! The back of the quilt testifies to this (above).

About three quarters through the quilting I decided to invest in a new quilting sewing machine, the first new sewing machine I've ever owned. It is a Brother PQ1500S. The "new product shock" was incredible, and wonderful. On the old Singer, I had to crank the wheel with my right hand to start every new row of stitching. If you imagine this with every turn of the quilt, back and forth, back and forth, over the whole top, I was an aching mess. With the new machine, I only have to touch the pedal with my toe! What a breeze. I guess I've been living in the dark ages, happily. So I finished the straight rows of quilting, and I saved the two toile panels for last.

Though I'd tried free motion quilting on the bottom half of James's quilt on the old Singer with decent results, I knew I could not progress in FMQ with the old machine. You really need to lower your feed dogs (though a few quilters don't), and I could not figure out how to lower mine. I found instructions online for an old Singer, but it wasn't the same model as mine. This contributed to the decision to buy a new machine, one that had all the settings, feet and possibilities I was looking for.

After some practice, I tackled the free motion quilting on the ladies. I was terrified. But the control I felt with the new machine was much greater than on James's quilt, and I am happy with the result of the echo stitching.

For me, the best part of creating a quilt is designing it. I have the next two in my head and will post about the process. After the deep old world hues of this quilt, and after such a very brutal winter, I am ready for a spring quilt next, which I'm calling either "jelly beans" or "crocus and jonquils." After that, a black and white one from Goodwill skirts.