Hotpad finishes

 A few weeks ago, I finished off some hot pads that have been lurking in my 'to quilt' basket for many years!  They are leftover blocks from other projects and make great hostess gifts (for when we are allowed to go out again ☺).  The larger mat was an attempt to use up some stitch and flip squares that were left over from a workshop I took in 2014 with Jacqui Gering.  I have finished a top using these units which I have to blog yet (it's being hand quilted).  I made this into a candle mat or table centerpiece, but I have lots of the units left and may make more of them into round potholders eventually.  These little projects were great practice for free motion and straight line quilting.

 

This table runner was also finally finished.  It was a class sample for a technique of sewing hexagon shapes with strips and I have made a number of samples and had lots of leftovers for hot pads.  I used a magnifico gold thread to free motion quilt this one for some sparkle.
 

 

 

Having fun with Selvages

While I was rooting around for some photos, I came across some hot pads I had finished this summer and realized I had not blogged about these.  

We were invited to a friend's cottage for an overnight stay in July.  Another mutual friend also joined us. We had a fabulous time catching up and enjoying the beautiful weather, swimming, boating, playing Scrabble, etc.  I had to test a few sewing machines and wanted an easy project so cut out some 8" squares of scrap fabric and a square of batting and covered them with selvages quilt as you go style.  That worked slick.  I dug out leftover pieces of binding from other projects and chose selvages to match those colours.  After stitching the selvages onto the batting base, I added a backing and stitched the bindings on.  I joined a couple of friends one evening and hand stitched the bindings down while they worked on their projects.  I got seven of the eight finished and the last one was stitched at the cottage :-).

Found some fun leftover binding strips in my bin :-)

I started with a strip in the middle on the diagonal ones and added selvages to each corner

Half of them were done in straight lines...the navy blue one was not finished yet.

 I gave four of them to each friend at the cottage.  They had a hard time choosing the colours LOL.