Hi All, I hope your New Year is off to a great start! I’m really excited about my sewing plans for this year but I thought I’d start with a simple but fun project for my newly created sewing space. As part of that reorginastion, I also cleaned and oiled both my machines. Undoubtedly they’re both running smoother but the racket my overlocker still produced when working at full pedal continued to jangle my nerves. I figured quilted mats were the answer!

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Fun and games! First time I've ever used the quilting guide that came with my walking foot; I marked off the first central two lines in chalk and then used the guide for sewing all the rest. Turns out, I find quilting a surprisingly Zen thing to do! #quilting #quiltingfun #sewmuchfun #sewingaccessories #quiltingfabric #walkingfoot

A post shared by Sew Sarah Smith | Sewing (@sewsarahsmith) on Jan 4, 2018 at 11:15am PST

I had one metre of this fab tape measure print cotton poplin and I wanted to see how much I could make from it. I ended up with two machine mats – one for each machine – a cushion cover and enough scraps left over to perhaps make a matching pin cushion too! The difference the mat makes to the running of the overlocker can’t be overstated… it’s like a new machine! If you haven’t got one for yours I highly recommend making your own; I’d never quilted a thing in my life prior to embarking on this and, at least with a project this size, it’s a simple yet fun thing to do! And I got to bust out the ‘quilting guide arm thingy’ that came with my walking foot and has been languishing in a drawer ever since!

If you want to find out more about the making of this project, including a bit of an ‘how to’ demonstration, the full post is now live on the Minerva Craft Blogger Network, including links to all the products I used (see HERE).

Hope to meet you back here soon – I’ve got a really busy week or so coming up including making a couple of Review garments from the new Wendy Ward book, a pattern test and my first magazine article being published; not exactly a bad stitchy start to the New Year eh!

Until then, happy New Year stitching to you too!

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