Hey Everyone, welcome back to Mug Rug Monday.
February is over and onto a new month which means a new colour. And I am sure you guessed it – green for St Paddy’s Day.
I’ve never been one to really go out and celebrate that day but I do remember when I lived in San Antonio they would change the water in the canal along the river walk to the colour green that day. The river walk was a great place to stroll and shop. Which reminds me I have ink sketches of the river walk that I never framed – oh boy they have been in a tube for 24 years – that’s not good.
All right back to the task at hand – the mug rug for today. Green it is. With a chevron or two or three. Otherwise known as a zigzag pattern.
I planned out what I wanted to make in EQ7 and picked out my fabrics. Two greens both with circles on them – one light and one dark.
Half Square Triangles
I needed to make a few half square triangles for this piece – 32 to be exact. I decided to use the grid method since they were all going to be the same. I drew the lines on the back of the light fabric.
Grid drawn on back of light fabric
Then sewed everything and cut apart the pieces on the solid line. Here’s one grid cut and one not.
One grid cut apart, one to go
I squared them up using the square up ruler from Quilt In A Day – which is my favourite ruler for squaring up half square triangles. All done I took them to the iron to press them open and discovered that I had squared them up to the finished size and didn’t leave a seam allowance. Ooops!
What to do?
I could start over and make new half square triangles or I could modify my mug rug design and use the teeny tiny half square triangles. I opted to go with the latter idea as I didn’t want to waste what I had already made and the time it took me to make them.
After laying them out on the table to make sure I had them in the right order and position I sewed them together trimming the dog ears off as I went.
Half square triangles laid out in order
Here they are sewn together. I was disappointed with the two fabrics and how they went together – the light green wasn’t near as light once sewn in with the dark green so I didn’t get as big a contrast as I had wanted in the chevrons.
Chevron design complete
Adding Borders
I originally was making the mug rug to be 8 x 12 inches in size and now the chevron section is 4 ½″ x 8 ½″ – just a teeny bit smaller than planned.
I added 2 inch borders to each long side.
Wide borders
I found the wide borders too heavy for the piece and I trimmed them to one inch. Much better.
Narrow borders
Quilting Lines
At this point I was thinking that if I use a bright or very light thread for the quilting it may help to develop a bit more contrast in the mug rug.
I used a bright green rayon thread to echo the zigzag design sewn with the walking foot. I am very pleased with the results.
Quilting completed in a zigzag pattern
Binding
To finish off this cute little mug rug or 6 x 8 inches I bound it with the lighter fabric using the traditional method of binding a quilt.
Completed mug rug
Even though my original design went a bit sideways the results from the modified design have turned out okay. At one point I almost scrapped the whole thing to start over – glad I didn’t.
What does your mug rug look like this week?
Happy Quilting!
