For MisterStitches

MisterStitches had a birthday recently.  As I was thinking about what to give him, I had an idea.  We really don't give each other birthday presents in a big way any more, as we don't need any more "stuff."  We do make a special point to go out to dinner to celebrate, though.

But I wanted to give him a little something.  So I decided to make him some baseball-themed fabric coasters.  He always uses a coaster at his desk.  And here is what I came up with.

I used some nice baseball fabric that I ordered from Bear Patch Quilting Company, in Minnesota.  The baseballs on this fabric have a used, rather old look to them.  And I paired it with some of my brown grunge fabric by Moda to make a little bit larger mug rug. 

You can see that I also used some San Francisco Giants fabric, too, his favorite team.

MisterStitches was very happy with his present, and told me it was one of the best presents he's gotten.  (Really--he was serious!)

Lots and Lots of Coasters to Sell

I recently sewed a lot of coasters for my guild to sell.  We had a booth at Art in the Redwoods a few weekends ago, held at the Gualala Arts Center.  I'm not really sure how many I made, but there were quite a few!

I had some San Francisco Giants fabric, so I made some coasters using that.  Notice the nice baseball diamonds that I quilted on them!

When I ran out of the baseball fabric, I simply used orange and black fabric.  These would work for either the Giants or for Halloween!

Even though I am not a fan of the Oakland A's, I thought maybe other people might be, so I made some coasters out of yellow and green fabric, the A's colors.

These coasters would also be nice for fans of John Deere equipment!

Now here are some everyday coasters out of some pretty fabric.  I tried some rather random, straight-stitching quilting designs on these.  They were too small for free-motion quilting.

And here are some Christmas coasters!  Most of these have a Christmas tree quilted onto them.

And some more Christmas coasters.

This last photo shows Halloween and autumn coasters.

I really had a lot of fun sewing these.  They went fast, and it was gratifying to see the stacks grow taller and taller.

Coasters, Coasters, and more Coasters

I had recently posted about making some coasters and wine glass holders using my Bear Patch Bits 5" squares. Here is a picture of those coasters.

I got very busy sewing some more of them last week. We had a houseful of wonderful guests here, and they were interested in the above coasters. So I brought out my nicely-organized (about which SisterStitches teases me!) plastic box of 5" squares and let people choose which squares they wanted for their coasters/wine glass holders. They had a lot of fun choosing colors and prints and putting different fabrics together.

That kept me busy sewing up all these little guys. They are incredibly easy to make. The beautiful thing about the pattern is that there is no hand-sewing necessary, and no raw edges visible.

This recent batch I made is slightly different, in that the patchwork design on top is done diagonally; instead of seeing four little squares, we see four little triangles. The pattern is by Daphne Greig.

So far I have made 27 diagonal coasters, in addition to the 12 I had made previously. The scary thing, though, is that I don't think I'm anywhere near done!