Friday Night Sew-In

For a while now, I’ve seen mentions around of this thing called a ‘Friday Night Sew-In’. The idea of having a sew-in on a Friday night seems pretty much perfect to me – I don’t know about you, but spending a Friday night alone with my sewing machine for company seems like a great way to spend the evening. 😉

Now, I must admit that I didn’t see the sign-up for the February Friday Night Sew-In until Saturday New Zealand time. Conveniently though, I actually spent my Friday night sewing – showing a brilliant clarity of foresight, maybe? (Or just habit. Hmmm.)

Wanna see what I made? I was a little bit naughty and ignored everything on my work-in-progress pile(s) and made a gift for someone instead. It was nice to pick up a small project – something I could start and finish in one sitting – since all my other current projects are taking aaaages due to the difficulty in finding sewing time.

Anyway, here’s my Friday sewing result:

It’s a mug rug! (Otherwise known as a giant coaster.) They’re meant to be the right size for a cup of tea and a biscuit. (And yes, that biscuit was tasty. A 1950’s recipe for Cherry Gingers. Yum yum!)

I used up some of my scrap stash of quilting cottons – one side has fabric from a dress I made for a friend, and some Kowhai flower cotton print (used in the Something Floral Something Blue dress).

The other side has fabric from the Journey dress and the January dress.

There’s quilt batting in the centre, to soak up any drips of tea and protect surfaces from hot cups. Double-fold bias binding around the edges. And I randomly stitched all over it rather than using lines for quilting. (I then went and bought a free-motion quilting foot on Saturday afternoon, so I may have to make another mug rug or two so I can try free-motion quilting for the first time.)

So there we have it – a small but satisfying project for a Friday night, about to be heading off to an unsuspecting friend! Hopefully it’ll get lots of love (and tea), and if not, hopefully they’ll pretend it does anyway. 😉 (I must admit it’s not all that perfect – the pink fabric just wouldn’t square up for some reason *sigh* and my quilting is, well, pretty basic (I’m at the very initial section of the learning curve for that!), but hey, I had fun making it, and that’s the main thing, right?) (Also, it’s a lot more rectangular than it looks in the photo – I foolishly took the photos at an angle, making it look like a trapezoid. But it gave me a chance to write ‘trapezoid’, which is a rather awesome word, so once again, that’s all ok.)

(Right, enough rambling! I’m off to bed, have a lovely week everyone!)