Do you have any of these?

Did you have one that you kept in your pocket when you were a little girl?

Did you have a whole shoe box full of them? 

I had a shoe box full and so did my daughter.  My Mom and my Grandmas gave them to us.  Sometimes I would sit for hours just touching the embroidery and feeling the smooth silky fabrics. Several years ago, I dreamt of making a quilt with all of them.

This summer when my daughter got married.  She asked if we could use them for the wedding.  We washed them and pressed them and neatly folded each one. We put them into an old picnic basket of my Grandma's.  We handed them out before the wedding ceremony, as a remembrance of the day and if some wanted to shed a tear of happiness for the bride and groom.

Before I put the remaining little hankies away, (back into the box for a Hankie Quilt that I will make some day), I decided I needed to make something out of them.

My first thought was to use the same fabrics from the wedding table runners, but they didn't seem to match any of the hankies.

Yellow fabrics would be pretty with this hankie.

I decided to make a little mug rug. First I needed to reinforce the back of the hankie to make it stronger.  I ironed on a lightweight interfacing like you put on the back of the T-shirts when making a T-shirt quilt.

Then I trimmed it.

All four sides.

Chose the yellow strips.

Then I started sewing on the strips and building around the hankie first.

I wanted the hankie to be in the corner of the mug rug, so I added the strips to form a rectangle.

It is ready to quilt.

Note that I quilted --- meandered right through the embroidery stitching on the hankie.

I stitched my name and the year as part of the quilting - of course!

I used a yellow daisy print on the back of the mug rug.

Trimmed it.

Bind it --- All machine Embroidery Stitched Binding.

Ready for a cup of coffee?

I am ready to make another one... and another one and another one...

How about you? 

Dig out those old hankies and make a little mug rug!

They would make a great gift for Grandma or anyone.

Take time to play!  Enjoy the moments in your life...

Marcia