Asian Mug Rug

 

A colleague at work did me a HUGE favor this past week, so a token of my appreciation was definitely in order.

I happened to know that the person likes Asian designs in neutral colors. My Asian scrap box was overflowing with just the right fabrics—already cut in strips anywhere from 3/4 to 2” wide.

Since I am always short of time, I decided to make a mug rug that I could piece and quilt at the same time.

First I cut a 12” square of batting and a 12” square of Pellon Décor Bond. I really could have gone a little smaller on that because I ultimately ended up trimming to 10” square.

I layered the Décor Bond on the bottom, then the batting, and finally chose two strips of fabric that I thought had a nice contrast. The Décor Bond has a fusible layer on one side. I never bother to fuse it at all. I just use it to provide stability.

Keeping the strips positioned across the diagonal, I flipped the gold strip on top of the black strip so that the right sides were together. Since the strips are of different widths, only one side can be aligned. With a walking foot, I stitched along the two aligned edges, stitching through the batting and Décor Bond at the same time. I did pin the strips down a bit before stitching, but not a whole lot.

When I finished stitching, I opened up the two strips and pressed with an iron.

Next I added a strip to the other side of the black strip, which was basically the center of the design. The seam on that one and the remainder of strips on that side of the mug rug end up flipping in the opposite direction as did the gold strip.

I continued adding strips to both sides…

Until my piece looked like this.

Using a rotary cutter, I trimmed to 10” square. I then centered a 12” square piece of fabric behind it and brought the edges forward to form the binding.

The black fabric makes it a little difficult to see how I accomplished this, so I am attaching a link to a similar project that shows the binding process.

http://quiltedtimeposts.blogspot.com/2013/02/rosy-mug-rug.html

I still have a huge stash of fabric strips.