Trivets for Susan

 Some time last Fall (November, maybe?), a friend called to ask if I could make some trivets for her that would be cuter than the ones she had been seeing in stores. "Of course," I said. "When do you want them?" "Whenever you have time," she said. Big mistake, Susan! Now she knows that I need a firm deadline, even if it is arbitrary!

 Susan follows me on Instagram.* Every time I saw that she had clicked "like" on one of my quilty photos or left a sweet comment, I felt guilty for not working on her trivets. A few months ago, I pulled all the reds and cream/tans from my stash and set them aside. I thought that was a good start. About a month ago, I was surprised to see my stash was seriously lacking in reds and low volumes. Haha!

 

When I cleaned out my quilty storage area to move some furniture around, I found the stack and quickly got to work. I used different block designs and different fabric combinations for each trivet to make the project more fun and interesting for me. That Dutchman's Puzzle might be my all-time favorite block.

 

She had asked for a modern country look. The smaller trivets are 8-9" and the larger ones are about 11".  There is a layer of Insul-brite and a layer of cotton batting. They are pretty thick, so I kept the quilting simple with just a few straight lines.

I get excited when I actually remember to sew my labels into the binding! (It's the little things, people.) The binding is done all on the machine for durability. I rinsed each one separately several times to remove most of the excess red dye. Then I threw them all in the washer with a color catcher and then into the dryer. I wanted to make sure they wouldn't run or fall apart on her, and they washed beautifully.

 

If there is a moral to this story, it is to always give Tina a deadline!

Percolation time: 8 months

Working time: 10 hours over 3 days

*If you ever wonder what I'm up to between blog posts, visit me on Instagram. I post there pretty regularly. For example, you can see what I worked on in a machine quilting class yesterday with Angela Walters!