Desk Warming Gift

I finished a little something.

We are in the process of moving our "office" desks from the dining room up to our bedroom, now that the bedroom is largely finished.

Troy recently finished his desk top (which he mounts on a pair of file cabinets). When he first sat down at it, he commented that he is going to need a mug rug to protect the desk surface.

Well, that is something I can take care of making! A few days later, I was in the mood for a small project that I could finish in short order and got to it.

I knew I had some leftover half-square triangles (HSTs) from my Merrily Christmas quilt top:

I had a bag of brown/tan HSTs and a bag with the green and red ones. I found the brown ones first, so those are what I used. And happily, that meant they were much less Christmas themed as well!

I pulled out all the HSTs from the bag and played with them until I had an arrangement I liked. Then sewed it together like a simple 16-patch.

I layered it with a layer of cotton batting on top (to absorb any moisture) and then a layer of wool batting on the bottom (to keep the moisture from soaking through). That's the theory anyway; I'll let you know if it works!

I backed it with some of my never ending supply of black leftovers and quilted it in echoed mitered corners.

My machine wasn't too happy with the thickness (or at least, that's what I assume it was). There were some flubbed stitches that you can see on the back.

I used the edge of the pressure foot to guide the distance between the lines and that happened to also cause the lines to fall along the seam lines. I had considered ahead of time whether to do the calculations to make this happen but decided to leave it to fate. And it worked out that way anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if the makers of pressure feet design them that way. (For example, making the edge of the foot 1/4" from the needle position would mean that it would line up with almost all blocks as they are general sized every 1/2".)

That is as far as I got the first afternoon. The next day I took the time to make binding from a piece of grey fabric I bought for my Lucy Boston project but didn't use. There wasn't enough for a double binding, so I just used a single thickness. It's not like this edge is going to get a lot of wear or have to stand up to much use.

I stitched it to the back so that the part that folded over to the front would be longer. Then when I stitched it by machine on the front, the stitching ran beside, but not over, the binding in the back.

I don't usually enjoy stitching binding by machine and am not usually happy with the result. (Those two things just might be related!) But for this one, I hand basted all the way around the front, right next to the fold. Then I could stitch just inside that stitching and nothing had a chance to shift or move. This isn't practical for a large quilt, but it was worth it to me for this project.

So now Troy has a mug rug for his desk, and since he's getting close to finishing my desktop, I have to start thinking about mine! I think I'll go look for those green and red leftover HSTs, Christmas themed or not...