Pick Me Up Coaster

Paul broke his toe the weekend before last. He tripped over a rolled up a rug in the hall, a rug that's been in the hall since February waiting to be donated at Goodwill. It's all our own fault for being horribly disorganised and excelling at procrastination. But either way, his toe is broken, he spent last week hobbling, and feeling sorry for himself, and that made me want to do something cheery for him.

So I gathered all my scraps in his favourite colours (that's be fruit salad colours, i.e lurid pink and solar yellow). And set about figuring out what I could make that he'd use/see every day. Settling on a coaster!

In total pre-destined fate, Heidi at Fabric Mutt posted about making a 4" square 16-patch pin-cushion about 12 hours after I'd settled upon making my 4" 16-patch coaster. This was brilliant, because two reasons; 1.) it reminded me of the laid back awesome Graph Paper QAL she's running this summer, and 2.) she linked to a tutorial on using interfacing to make the tiny piecing much less crazy-making.

Stuck in my head in the middle of the night

This turned out to be a lot of fun to make. Though arranging the fabrics in vague colour order took more tries than I expected.

The project really zipped along, and apart from the binding being super fiddly (I should have just made this so as it turned inside out, and I topstitched the edges) it was easy as pie.

Going quilty mad on something so tiny is also fun, and the grid lets me go straight line mad really easily - I think I'm giving up on trying FMQ for another few months. Testing the limits of straight lines instead, perhaps...

Obligatory tacky mug!

Anyway, I love this little coaster. It's just the pop of hot happy colour goodness that will always make you feel better, and once it was underway I realised it was going to need a supremely tacky mug to go with it. Luckily Starbucks came to the rescue and a super shiny gold ombré mug now lives with this coaster. Totally at odds with the rest of Paul's black office!

Dodgy live action shot of it in the wild.

Linking this tiny finish up to Fabric Mutt's Graph Paper QAL :)

PS The rug has now been donated!