little kitchen projects

It's been forever since I've posted, but then no one but me ever reads my posts. I've been lurking, looking at all those wonderful projects on Amanda Jean's Finish It up Fridays, getting lots of inspiration. These days most of my creative energy has

gone to making little things for grandbabies, and they outgrow them before they are worn out.

Here is my first post holiday project: a couple mug rugs and bowl-holders for microwaving your lunch: 8 nickel squares with narrow seams or two 10 inch squares, padded with a bit of cotton batting and shaped with darts. So easy and they keep your fingers from getting scorched trying to pick up a hot bowl from the microwave. They've made great gifts. We saw these in the New England Quilt Museum this Christmas, came home and found the pattern/tutorial on Etsy. The bright colors are a new set from Moda. The African prints are from my stash.

From one of the Finish It Up posts, I saw a dishmat with quilted top and towel backing. This is made from left overs from other quilts. While I am not satisfied with how rumply it is, as the towel won't lie flat, it's great to have extra space for draining dishes when cleaning up after a party.

Then I saw quilted covers for mixers and since I had lots of strips and scraps of batiks in these colors, I decided I needed one of these too. Took a bit of time to figure out the size but tonight I downloaded the Downton Abbey episode I missed Sunday night and turned the pieced strips into a finished product. Now my mixing bowl won't be full of crumbs when I am ready to bake and almost all my green and orange batiks are used up.

So here, I am going to try to link up with Amanda Jean's Finish it Up Friday and see if I can join the quilting world on the web.