Monday Sewing Day

My small quilting group meets every other Monday, all day long, in a community building. There is enough space for us to all bring our sewing machines and gear and set up for a full day of sewing. These Mondays are a real treat, as there are no interruptions, and it's fun to get together, discover new techniques, bounce ideas off each other, in addition to all the sewing we can get done. We can set up two big tables together to baste a quilt, too.

This week one of the things I worked on was some Christmas ornaments. In the picture above, one mitten is made from commercial felt, and the other three ornaments are made from an old wool skirt that I washed (hot) and dried (hot) in order to felt it. I'd thought that I would stuff them with a little fiberfill, but they didn't really need it; I just did a machine blanket stitch all around the edges.

Next I used up some of my gazillion 5" squares and sewed some coasters. Both the squares and the pattern for these coasters came from Bear Patch Quilting Company in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Check out their website and see how you can join the "Bear Patch Bits" club. Every month I receive 20 five-inch squares of new fabric that the store has recently added to its stock. It's just like a little Christmas every month when that envelope comes in the mail! This store isn't exactly in my neighborhood, although I have visited it a few times and it's a great store. SisterStitches is the manager at this quilt store, which is how I know it so well.

Here is a close-up of the coasters. Each coaster uses six 5" squares of fabric and one 5" square of batting. The ingenious way they are put together means No Hand Sewing, which is a very nice feature indeed! Place the fabrics together, sew once around all four sides and turn inside out. That's all there is to it. Very easy and quick to stitch up.

I made some of the coasters with a variation. Instead of using four squares on the top to form the basket-weave pattern, I just used two squares. This left a slit in the middle so that the bottom of a wine glass can slip into it. So the coaster serves to protect a tabletop AND to identify the wine glass.

And here is a close-up of the coaster/wine glass holder.

I only made a small dent in my 5" square collection, but it's a start!