Make My Day Camp: Mug Rug

Monday, April 8, 2019

Mug Rug

Before putting away the sewing machine mess in the dining room (from making bowl cozies, silverware pouches, and the small fabric wallet - I was on a roll!), I made a couple "mug rugs" with some of the leftover scraps - I totally winged it after seeing a few examples online because quite truthfully I didn't know if I actually needed a rug for my mug and didn't want to spend a lot of time on it. Of course I had to rip out the binding about 18 times because I'm a dummy and an almost-perfectionist and kept sewing it wrong, so it ended up taking much longer than it should have! These are very simple, I just kept messing up...

The mug rug can be whatever size you want - I made one about 8x5" and another 6x4", really it's just a padded coaster to set your mug (and a couple cookies) on - make it whatever size you feel like.

The back is a solid piece of fabric, the front/top side is strips of 2" material sewn together, and it's bound together with self-made bias tape.

After sewing the 2" strips together, press the seams flat. Cut a piece of batting the same size as the top and bottom fabric piece, sandwich it between the two outer pieces with their right sides facing out (so lay the bottom piece on your work surface with the right side down and the wrong side facing up, add the batting, then put the top piece on the batting with the right side up). Sew the sandwich together by sewing along each of the strips (or you could do a pattern like if you were quilting) to hold all three pieces in place.

Unfold the bias tape and lay it on top of the sandwich as shown in the picture below. Starting in the middle of one side, sew "in the ditch", which means along the fold line about 1/2" from the edge.

About 1/4" from the corner, turn the fabric and sew on an angle to the corner. Cut the threads and remove from the sewing machine.

Fold the strip up following the angled line you just sewed.

Then fold it back on itself and line it up with the next side, continue sewing in the ditch until you reach the next corner, repeat until you have all 4 corners done.

After sewing all 4 corners you need to sew the two ends of the bias tape together. To do that, fold one edge back about 1/2" and lay the other edge on top. Sew across both ends.