I have finished the shoe mat that I was making a few weeks ago. A lot of you expressed horror that I would put muddy shoes on such pretty fabric, but hey, it's better than putting shoes on ugly fabric!
I made a panel from HSTs in a chevron design. I used a charm pack of Fancy by Lily Ashbury and some Kona Coal. The finished mat measures about 40" x 16" so it's long and skinny and it fits perfectly underneath the radiator.
Here is a picture of the back. I have no idea why I've taken a picture of the back or why I might have thought you would be interested to see it!
I layered it right sides together with an old towel, sewed all round leaving a gap, then turned through. Anything to avoid binding!
I quilted it with my walking foot, just echoing the chevron. I was hoping to avoid quilting the outer edge as it would be lots of stopping and starting, but it just doesn't look right without quilting.
I chose to only do two lines of quilting in the triangles though.
I think it looks pretty cool from the back.
And here it is complete with muddy shoes!
I know this is a crafting blog, but my bunnies do sometimes make an appearance here, so I wanted to give you the sad news. On Sunday morning we lost our beautiful little Ellis.
She had lived with us for 7 years, she was a rescue rabbit. Needless to say me and Mr CA are so very sad, but poor Colin (her companion) is devastated, I have never seen a more lonely or depressed bunny. Although it's a bit soon for me to have a new rabbit, I think we'll have to find Colin a new friend this weekend as I don't want to lose him from a broken heart.
On with the crafting...
On New Year's Day I started a new project. We leave our shoes in the dining room as our hall is very narrow. They're just plonked under the radiator and this includes Mr CA's boots when he's been out doing archery on muddy fields. I get tired of sweeping up the dried mud, and the hay from my shoes (I always have bits of hay sticking out of my hair, sawdust clinging to my jumper, straw stuck to my jeans...) so decided a mat was in order. Something I can throw in the wash.
I picked out a charm pack - Fancy by Lily Ashbury for Moda which was a present from the lovely Kerry. I'd roughed up a quick sketch on graph paper and worked out some sizes and I knew I wanted fabric with 2 distinct colours. In the end I went for 2, but colours that could be paired - green and blue and yellow and orange.
I added some Kona Coal that I'd bought for another project and made some HSTs. They were cut down to 4" squares, so there was plenty of room for error!
Even so, I managed to make some mistakes... I think I had my ruler upside down. I replaced them and made another 8 as I'd managed to completely miscount!
This is the final layout, it just needs sewing up. And quilting of course! I know it's not the most original of designs, but I've pinned a lot of chevron quilts so I was bound to make some chevrons at some point! Hopefully I'll be able to show you this all finished soon. It may be the guinea pig for FMQ on my new machine.
