Candle Mats

As I shared yesterday, my goal today was to create Candle Mat's that could be used as gifts, my inspiration for this was a Pinterest pin of an Etsy product (which if you don't want to make yourself you can buy for about $15). 

After purchasing some white fabric and navy fabric I decided to make my candle mats with the navy snowman fabric I had been using in my holiday projects. I love this fabric because it's holiday but doesn't scream Christmas. 

To make my candle mats I wanted to do a 10.5 by 10.5 square, and I didn't want to have to make 8 half square triangles per candle mat, so I made large pin wheels with only four sides. So all together I created 3 candle mats, with the use of 6 HST's made from originally 6 inch by 6 inch square (I make them big and cut them down to ensure it looks like had good accuracy). The first square I did on it's own, but when I started the second I decided to do all the cuts for the third as well and produce them at the same time, turned out to be a great idea because I wasn't switching task all the time. 

I used pinwheel instructions from Quilts for Kids which is a non-profit organization that collects quilts for kids who have illnesses or hardships going on in their lives. (Seems like a good organization, and once I get to making quilts I would love to do something like this.) 

The three mats turned out really well I think, I loved how the backs turned out the most. 

The back almost looks like a snowflake pattern because I kept my bobbin thread white.

On the top I quilted each individual pinwheel, for white I used navy thread, for the snowman fabric I used white thread. And handy dandy,stitch 23. 

The interesting thing about stitching these versus my last projects is I was just using regular cotton thread so I was able to up the speed on my machine to full blast and it was fun! I zipped right through each pinwheel segment. I also kept my 1/4 foot quilting foot on the machine which I don't know should have been left on, but it allowed me to make sure I was leaving the right amount of space so all of the pinwheel segments were quilted in the same way. 

All Three Completed Candle Mats, one with a candle to show scale. 

This is a candle mat on top of our sub-woofer. I figured if it's going to be in the living room it might as well be festive. 

Just another picture but on our end table. 

I am certainly glad I made three, I might make a few more even. I am going to keep one for myself and I have two that will be gifts and I'm super excited to finally get to share my quilted pieces with other people. 

Now I just need to get some quilting tags so I can put created by on each one :)

A Day Without Sewing

With the completion of the tree skirt, I needed to take some time today to explore what would be my next project. Instead of working on putting together a few random blocks for practice I went to the Internet to explore patterns. I found a bunch of fun patterns through www.craftsy.com, as well as McCall's, and www.free-quilting.com. I saved them on my computer and my pinterest to help me keep track of ideas. 

By the end of the night I decided my project for tomorrow will be to make Candle Mats. I saw a few on Craftsy as well as pinterest and they are really cute and they'd make the perfect secret santa project for my office. My inspiration candle mat was this from Pinterest via Etsy.

I loved the pinwheels and that they quilted each individual wheel.