Handmade Holiday

This year my brother, my sister, and I decided to make handmade gifts for Christmas.  Actually, I decided, and my sister jumped on the bandwagon because it would be cheaper.  I left a voice mail for my brother outlining our plan and saying that the kids and I would be very happy to get cookies, banana bread, or anything else he could bake for Christmas.  I assume he's in.

I have a long list of handmade gifts for Christmas.  For my brother, my sister, and their significant others I plan on making mug rugs.  The mug rugs came together really quickly...piecing, basting, and quilting took only an afternoon and evening.  Tomorrow I hope to bind them and cross them off my list.

I love log cabin blocks.  I figured this would be a good way to make the couples' mug rugs coordinate without matching exactly.  The blue ones will be for my brother and his girlfriend, the purple for my sister and her fiance. 

I'm going to buy some cheap mugs and roll up the mug rugs in the mug.  Then I'll add some homemade cookies if I have time, and candy canes if I don't (who am I kidding, I may as well buy the candy canes now, that's totally how I'm going). 

So, that's four gifts nearly knocked out and it's not even Halloween.  That's good, because there are some others on my list that are going to take a ton of time.

My list:

Brother & girlfriend - mug rugs
Sister & fiance - mug rugs
Son's teacher - mug rug
Nephew - crib sized quilt
Mom - Carpenter's Wheel quilt (at least the top)
Dad - pot cozy

I went to my local modern quilt guild's sew day and squandered my precious hours working on my scrappy log cabin quilt and my double slice quilt.  I should have planned ahead and done these instead!  I'll know for the November sew day.

First UFO Sunday

So Sundays are now UFO Day at the Free Motion Quilting Project blog.  Check it out!

In the spirit of finishing our UFOs, I pulled out one that I'd been putting off for a long time.

A mug rug.

The shame of it!  Who couldn't finish a little mug rug?  Seriously, how did I avoid finishing it for months?

Here's what happened.  My sister and I had this idea that we could put together a craft show booth.  My sister would sell jewelry, and I'd sell sewn items.  So I started sewing together a mug rug out of my less-than-favorite fabrics to sell it.  However, I ran into two problems:

1.  It's not fun making something to sell, especially if you're anticipating that it will be one in a long line of things to sell.  For me, it just takes the joy out of it.

2.  It's not fun working with fabrics that you aren't in love with.

So I scrapped the idea of doing a craft show booth and my half-finished mug rug just...sat.  It was all pieced and quilted, it just needed to be bound.  It sat in my sewing area, bugging me.  But when I heard about this project I figured it would be a good reason to finish it.

Today I finished putting the binding on my mug rug. 

Ta-da!  I'm happy I finished it.  I'm going back to work this week and it'll be nice to have on my desk.  I don't drink coffee, so I'll put my Coke Zero on it.  And, this mug rug was pieced and quilted on my Singer 66 (which is powered by a hand crank), and bound by hand (ugh...another reason to put this project off...I hate hand binding!).

One UFO down, many to go...

Check out everyone's UFOs!