Saturday Sewing: Let’s Make Lemonade Mug Rug

When I think of a Mug Rug I get visions of a warm fire, a good book, a cup of hot chocolates (with marshmallows of course) and a couple of Mum’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. But Mug Rugs are not just for the Fall and Winter months.

During the hot weather, my glass of lemonade (sorry only had pink lemonade) gets condensation on the glass. With the mug rug it won’t give me a water ring on my table.

Using my Janome MC500E Embroidery machine I thread with Madeira thread. I love the colours and have very little thread breakage.

Threading your machine properly will assist you in a great finished project. Thread through the hook first, then the hole and then around the bar.

Threading properly with the spool stand and anti-kink hook allows your thread to straighten out before it gets to the tension disks of your machine.

These designs I’m using are from the partnerhsip between Janome Canada and Sew4Home and are available at your favourite Janome Canada Dealer. We blogged previously about this. 

Once my main design is completed, I want to add the day of the week and change the size and placement.

You can change the size of your design by 20% larger or smaller without changing the integrity of the design. I have chosen to make my design 20% larger.

Now I want the design to be on the angle, so I changed to a 45 degree angle.

The plastic grid for your hoop comes in handy because you can place it on the design prior to stitching to ensure your placement on the screen is where you want it on the fabric. 

I’m making my mug rug a little bigger by adding fabric to the side.

Trim the excess fabric off.

I want to add quilting to the extra fabricby using decorative stitches on an angle. I have drawn 1 line in the direction that I want. This is the starting point for my decorative stitches.

Using my walking foot with the quilting guide bar, I quilt with a decorative stitch. Make sure you chose a relatively uncomplicated stitch and DO use the Manual dual feed function when stitching this on the Janome Continental M7. 

Lining up the bar with the previous line of stitching ensures that my rows of stitching are evenly spaced.

If you are using a decorative stitch and need it to stop and lock immediately, press the reverse button. It will stop a decorative stitch right away. The locking button will stop and lock at the end of the pattern.

I have attached my binding to the back of my mug rug so I can flip over and finish off with a decorative stitch.

I like using the same decorative stitch to stitch my binding that I used to quilt my project.

Mug rugs are not just for hot drinks. They can be used as a mini table runner like I have here in my bathroom with my lemon soaps.