Pumpkin Mug Rug ~ A tutorial!

I love the look of white pumpkins in fall decor. A nice departure from all that orange! Originally, I came up with this mug rug tutorial for a guest blog post  for Sew We Quilt at the end of the month. But then I got thinking, maybe everyone will be over pumpkins by then and making a bee line to valentines. Oh wait, there's another holiday in there somewhere, right? Anyway, I came up with a new idea for that blog post (look for it October 29th!) and can show you this one now. It's super easy. You can make one this afternoon!

Here's what you need: Scraps of cream fabrics.

Scraps of green fabrics:

And all the usual suspects (batting and backing 10 x 12 should be plenty) plus some binding fabric (I made single fold binding, cut it 1.5" wide, and needed about about 40 inches or so. Again, I used up scraps.) BTW, if you're super observant, you'll notice those long strips are more like 10.5 inches long. When I drew up the dimensions, I screwed up a bit. 9.5 is the correct length!

Let's get sewing:

Sew the center up log cabin style, adding sides first, then top and bottom.

Next, we're going to add triangles to the corner, to give it a pumpkin shape.

On the wrong side of your fabric, draw a diagonal line down the center of your 1.5 inch background squares.

Line up the squares on the corners of your pumpkin unit, and sew on the drawn line.

 When you're done, it should look like this. Press your corner out. If you like, you can trim out the back layers.

Next, sew the stem unit together.



And add to pumpkin unit.

Add the borders:

And your top is finished! Now, make your sammich. (You can see I added a couple of little cross stitches to be fancy. Totally optional!)

Next, quilt as desired. I did a simple in the ditch quilting around all the "logs" on the pumpkin and on the stem.

Add binding (I chose single fold binding. Cut at 1.5 ", fold over 1/4" and press, then sew unfolded edge to quilt as usual. Bring binding around to back and hand sew ~ I always hand sew my bindings. I like to do it!)



You're done! A pumpkin mug rug! Which would go so nicely with a pumpkin latte, I think!