Hey Everyone, welcome back to Mug Rug Monday.

Wow, here it is the beginning of the week and my mug rug is made. The problem is it is the wrong week – this is last week’s mug rug.  We had a wonderful time at the cottage with lots of work done and some relaxation.

I wasn’t sure what to create for mug rug #27. My sister suggested two lawn chairs on a dock since I have been spending a lot of time at the cottage but very little time sitting on the dock. The cottage is a work project – left to us in a slight state of disrepair and much cleaning needed. Anyway it is getting there and soon the inside will be spic n span clean. Can you still buy spic n span?

Michael suggested I make a mini mini sunflower but skip the Bargello part. I’ve gone with his suggestion as I couldn’t really come up with anything else to make and I do love sunflowers.

To begin I drew a sunflower on some paper to use as the appliqué template.

Sunflower on 8 ½″ x 11″ paper

Then decided it was a tad large and reduced it on the photocopier.

Sunflower reduced in size

I found a fabric with lots of texture in a golden yellow colour for the petals.

Golden yellow for petals

And don’t forget the sunflower centre – this fabric will be fabulous.

Dots for the centre

Thread is very important. I’ve chose 3 from the King Tut line to do my stitching.

Thread choices for quilting and stitching

After tracing the pieces on fusible I fused them to the fabric and then built the sunflower on my Teflon sheet.

Before fusing the flower to the background fabric I decided to quilt it using a free motion cross hatch design. Here’s the piece pinned and the grid all marked out in one direction. I used my cool safety pin fastener to pin the layers together. I love this tool.

Sandwiched and grid drawn

Cross hatching done. The free motion lines are pretty straight which was accomplished by using the drawn lines to follow otherwise I might have had pretty wobbly lines.

Cross hatching done

With the quilting done I then transferred the flower to the background fabric. And stitched it in place with a jagged edge free motion zigzag stitch.

Stitching complete around flower

With the binding in place the mug rug is all ready to take to the cottage for use or decoration. It measure 7 ½″ square.

Mini mini sunflower mug rug complete

Love the back as well.

The back

I think I should make a couple more of these for the cottage – maybe different flowers in different colours so everyone can have a choice of flower when they come to visit. Not so sure the guys are going to want a flower motif mug rug.

Happy Quilting!