sew lovely

I recently entered a Valentine Swap over at my friend,  Tracy's blog.  Everyone who signed up was paired with a partner and I was paired with Jodi from Jolly Bee!  I cracked up when I got the email with her name because Jodi and I are already swapping buddies.  She blessed me over the holidays with a beautiful table runner and she's always so encouraging and friendly.

She's been a gift to me as a blog friend and I was thrilled to get another excuse to bless her.  But, she beat me to the punch.  She sent me this wonderful heart pincushion.  I've already put it to good use and loaded it up with pins.

After sorting through the ideas I'd collected I settled on making her a mug mat for some of her Valentine snacking....I saw a similar idea over on Andrea's blog and worked from that for my own version.

I used Rae's cheater binding to do the edging and I'm sure that I won't ever go back to binding small quilt projects the old way with cutting and binding and pinning and pressing.  This cheater binding was so fun that after I finished Jodi's, I made a couple more.  

I think it's an illness....I can never make just one of something.  I used my sewing machine to do all the stitching.  I had to go pretty slowly to do the hearts. I think these would also be pretty with hand embroidered stitches in place of the machine stitching.

Thanks to Tracy for hosting the Valentine swap and to Jodi, my partner, for my beautiful heart pincushion! Spreading love is so much fun....I hope you find some ways to spread love in your corner of the world!