Race to the New Year!

It seems like this week has totally gotten away from me. I worked six days this week and had events and activities going on almost every day. So the beginning of my quilt top, is still just a quilt top as of today (Saturday). I need to get the batting and backing and when I made it to Joann's I had another project in order so I decided to focus on that project.

I am a proud Wildcat, having graduated from Central Washington University and the University of Arizona. So when I saw NCAA fabrics were on sale at Joann's purchased the U of A print and some ASU print. Then I got coordinating broad cloth fabrics to the prints. I have quite a few friends who went to UA or ASU so I thought they would make great holiday presents. 

On Thursday, I got the fabrics and started cutting out my 5 inch squares.  

I produced enough squares to make 32 coasters, 16 UA and 16 ASU. This way I could make sets of 4.

Cutting went pretty fast, I was able to cut 5 inch strips and then used a 5 inch block ruler to cut those strips down. I recently got this chart which comes in a word document that I got from the linked website and it is great because it let me know that from a yard of fabric I should be able to get 56 5 inch squares. So even with my cuts for all of the coasters thus far I still have about 1/2 a yard of each fabric to play with or make more coasters from. 

To make the coasters the most time consuming part is ironing the coordinator fabrics in half. Thankfully my wonderful husband helped me do about 1/4 of them on Thursday night so I was able to complete 8 coasters by the end of the night. 

Today I finished making the additional 24 coasters, to do this I made an assembly line process. First I ironed and then stacked all the fabrics, then I did the first sew, next I cut the corners and inverted the coordinating fabrics, then did the second sew to ensure the middles met appropriately. Then I took all 24 and cut off the little strings and such. It took me about 3 hours to complete all of this but when I was done I was very happy with the results 

Bear Down, Arizona!

For the tutorial link on how to make these coasters be sure to check out my past post 

called "10 Minute Project".

Gifts Galore!

Most of today was spent enjoy football, food, and the company of our friends. However, this evening I took some time to do a few quick quilting projects. 

As I mentioned yesterday evening, I wanted to make the Tissue Holder that was featured on the Riley Blake Designs website. To do this all you need is 3 pieces of 4 by 6 inch fabric. To make the tissue holder you form it inside out, then sew around the outside and invert to have your Right Sides showing. This was really quick and looks way cuter than carry around a plastic stash of klennex. I plan to make a few more of these, likely one with the peacock fabric, and the others from different fabrics I have a good amount of. 

Completed holder, showing tissue inside :)

Completed Holder Closed

Once completing this little project (less than 15 minutes!) I decided to see if I could reverse engineer my coffee coaster from yesterday to use less material. The Riley Blake Design pattern for the coffee coaster/hot pads calls for 5 squares of equal size, one square is your backing, and then the other 4 are ironed in half, and when you sew it together and invert it only 1/2 of each fabric still shows... this lead me to wonder if you really needed the underside of fabric. So I took the corners that I had cut off my Christmas Tree Skirt and used the seam ripper to borrow the 1/2 triangle squares then I cut down the 5 inch corner square to the size of the 2 half triangles (because they were cut just over 1/4 inch they weren't a full 5 inches together). Once I had this done I laid the fabrics the same way requested by the original pattern, but I did Wrong Sides up so when I inverted the Right Sides would come through. The results were just ok. In the original design the middle points of the fabrics meet but aren't sewn together which looks fine, but with this there was a good amount of gap, so I took my hand at sewing a few extra lines in to hold down the middle better.  The coaster turned out to be usable, but I wouldn't do this for future coasters, the original way was better. 

What I consider the Top

Bottom of Coaster

Once this was complete I decided to go back to the original pattern;  I had 15 charm squares left from my Mr. Claus set I'd ordered for the Christmas Tree Skirt, so I ended up using them to create 3 more coasters to go with the one I completed last night. 

Complete Set, Fronts of Each. To get the centers to meet I ended up pinning them and then sewing the outer border. 

Two Fronts, Two Backs. The Merry Christmas Fabric is on the back of all 4, 2 are Red, 2 are Green. It was the only fabric that required it go a specific direction so I figured I'd match it. 

So far that's what I've done for the evening, I might try a few more things but we'll see. I'll be sure to update if I do!

10 Minute project!

Quilted coaster! So easy to make, take 5 charms, iron 4 in half, stack on top of batting, sew around all corners, clip corners, turn inside out, and sew new border and tada you're done!!

Learned it from Riley Blake Designs Website Tutorials, you can find it here.

Front Side

Back Side