Mug Rug Swap culminates in Snack Time!

What's better than a mug rug? A mug rug covered in snack.

So the Two/Tea for Teal Mug Rug Swap and Fundraiser (much like my calendar issue of the previous post, I was having apparently having problems settling on one name for this one), and I really could not be happier with how it all turned out. Once all the stragglers and extra donations were counted, close to $150 was raised for OCRF, and for the first time out I think that is very respectable. I thank everyone who participated for your creativity in your mug rugs and your cheerful willingness to raise awareness. We'll do it again next September for sure - I'm already on the hunt for some good theme fabric!

For those unfamiliar, the Two for Teal swap required participants to pay $5 for a little piece of this fabric


and use all or part of it to create a mug rug and send it off to another participant. If the fabric was just not to one's taste (and I will admit, I don't love it myself, but it was a great one for Tea for Teal, no?), it could be used on the back. $3.50 from each participant fee was donated to OCRF, and the remaining $1.50 each was used to pay for the fabric and postage.

If you've been keeping up with checking out the flickr group, you've seen how fantastic these rugs are, and you'll have to click on over to see most of them because the photos are copyrighted and I can't grab them to show you. They are well worth a glance! Really! Go! Now! Then come back!

The the first of the two rugs I made for my partners was quite literally thrown together in about 15 minutes without ever picking up my rotary cutter or scissors as all of these little fabric scraps were lying all over my cutting table at the conclusion of a recent project. Rather than throw them all away, I simply gathered them up and started crazy piecing them together. I may or may not have crawled under my sewing table searching for a few stray scraps of these purples to cut the teal a bit. It was really fast and easy and I just love how it turned out. This rug was sent to Rebecca in Mississippi, who made me feel very special by making "Thankyouthankyouthankyou" the subject line of her email. She also had this to say about the swap itself: "I do try something new with each swap ~ this time was a bigger paper-piecing project. Thank you, too, for putting this swap together. I really enjoy making a surprise for someone else (and receiving a surprise, too!)" 

 I very much like her attitude, and am thrilled that it is living with someone who loves it.

My other swap partner, Sue in New Jersey, has a friend who has a stepdaughter who is currently undergoing OC treatment. For her I decided to create something slightly more meaningful than a pile of scraps pulled off the floor, and created this original, albeit simple, design. It's just some machine applique and echo quilting, but the message is important. The "Hope For a Cure" Mug Rug is available as a download from my Craftsy store for $2.50, and every month I will donate half of all proceeds from its sale to the American Cancer Society. It is my hope that the ribbons on the mug rugs made from this pattern will be all colors, not just teal, and that we can help end this fight just by sewing for twenty minutes or so.

So far I have received a rug (pictured above featuring my yummy muffin, which I am not ashamed to admit is now completely gone, and had you been here with me I would have given you one as well and you would have asked for the recipe) from Amanda from TX, who blogs at What the Bobbin?, which is a name that really just kind of cracks me up. It is the perfect size and shape for right next to my laptop, where I am chained lately writing my next pattern, and I love it. Amanda loves to run swaps on her blog, too, so check her out!

And no blog post of late can be complete without a foray into the bowels of my Aiming for Accuracy project, to see if the latest step toward its completion has improved the look of it in the slightest. In a nod to my southern hotties, I think we can all agree that the answer is still a firm "Bless her heart."

Ever my biggest fans, my daughters are still saying it is going to be a pretty quilt to have around at Christmas, but I'm thinking they may be hedging their bets that to say otherwise would reduce the present pile significantly.


Will I love it more when the final section is on? A better question would be will I love it at all at that point. Sigh.

Back to pattern writing I go. If you are a fan on Facebook, you've seen a preview and you may have helped me kick myself in gear with all the love you threw around for it, and I thank you. If you aren't, maybe you need to check it out over there. The goal is to have the pattern done in a couple of weeks - we'll see! The best news is I have THE BEST name for it, but it is staying supersecret until the thing is out. But feel free to guess.