December is Here!

If you asked me what I did all week, I would have to think really hard to come up with something (anything!) worth telling you about!  Ummm.... I got a mammogram?  (Well, I guess that was important!)

But in my sewing room, another "Ummm..." I guess the Christmas season is upon us, and that means sewing gifts and seasonal projects end up taking over, and I have had to put my ScrapJar Stars RSC2016 quilt on the backburner for awhile.  And, this time of year, you can't always blog about what you were really working on until later in the month, if you know what I mean!

I did want to do some scrappy sewing this week, so I decided to try my hand at making some potholders for my mom to take to her when we go visit next week.  I followed a tutorial by Jayne of Twiggy and Opal for the basic construction, but used my own idea for the blocks I made.

It's always so easy to pull string scraps out and sew them onto a foundation, so that's how I started.  I cut a scrap piece of Warm and White batting 8" x 8", and used scraps that are kind of Southwestern in color scheme, because my mom lives in Arizona, and that's how her house is decorated.  Almost all of these fabrics were used somewhere in one of my RSC blocks this year!

Next I added a layer of Insulbright batting, and a piece of backing fabric, and did some straight line quilting to hold everything together.  

I used the same fabric scraps for both potholders, but gave them the opposite for backing and binding.  I finished the binding by machine stitching to make sure it would be strong, but I'm not particularly pleased with how the stitching looks on the back of the potholders.  That may still need to be ripped out and redone. No decision made on that yet!

The two layers of batting, with one being Insulbright, give these potholders a pretty hefty thickness, and I think they'll work for holding onto hot things!

Since it IS December, and I really like to sew with Christmas fabric in December, I decided to pull out some strings of Christmas fabric and make a couple of Christmas-y coasters to take to Mom also.  To start with, I made a big rectangle of these fabrics (about 7 x 16) and then cut into it with my 60 degree triangle ruler to make this fun shape.  I used some more Insulbright for these, added a piece of backing fabric with right sides together, and stitched around the edge, leaving a small opening on one side for turning.

These are cute!  I might want to keep them!  (Although, there are definitely more scraps to be used up, so I could just make more...)

I hope you are having fun playing in your scraps right now, or working on Christmas gift projects, or wherever your crafting takes you!

Sharing at ScrapHappy Saturday tomorrow!