Spring Swap

I participated in the Springtime Mug Rug swap hosted by Michele at the Quilter's Gallery.  These are the two mug rugs I made for myself. 

Here are some pictures of the front and back of both mug rugs.

In hindsight, I can see that the label works so much better with a dark color thread on these batiks.  I still love the batiks for this project.  Bright colors are just so much fun!  I fussy-cut some of pieces to make the fabrics work for me.  I love these flowers.

Both patterns were designed by The Patchsmith.  You can find her patterns on Craftsy in her store.  They are reasonably priced, so click through and check them out.  The butterfly trail was free-motion stitched before I layered the top with the batting and backing.

The appliques were stitched down by machine with Masterpiece from Superior Threads before I layered the top over the batting and backing.  

While Masterpiece is not intended for quilting, I did quilt with it in this case.  Since I did all the quilting free-motion on my sewing machine, I could stitch slowly and get good-looking stitches without thread breaking.  I don't think I could get this good a stitch with the long arm with this thread.  I would have used So Fine! #50 for long arm quilting with this level of detail.

The binding was attached by machine on the top and hand-stitched to the back.  I don't usually use a narrow binding, but these mug rugs finish at 5.5" by 9" and I thought a binding cut at 2.5" would be entirely too wide.  This binding was cut at 2" and finished just a hair over 1/4" on the front and right at 3/8" on the back. I could have cut the binding at 1.75" and gotten a great result on the front and back.