Bumblebee Chair Pad

YIPPEE, It is finished and I love it!  I'm still not done with my lion rug but had a couple things that needed to be finished in order to take to my show in July.  One such rug was the swimsuit piece, the Beloved Belindy, an Annie doll and  this Bumblebee Chair Pad.  Here is my latest completed project, the adorable Bumblebee Chair Pad which is a design of Lori Brechlin.  The eyes are done using a technique known as 'quilling' and it certainly gives dimension and interest to the mat.

 I'll fess up to being a cheap skate ~ well, let's call it thrifty!  I hate wasting foundation when it is going to be cut away and thrown in the trash.  So when I decided to draw out the design looked for as small a piece of extra linen that was in my 'left over' pile.  There was a piece that was plenty wide enough and would fit over the grippers of my frame if a little cotton was added to the sides so I sewed some on and it fit over the grippers just fine.  However, it was going to be a little longer than I needed and no way was I going to let that go to waste either.  So I decided to hook some proddy flowers on the bottom and they will eventually be made into flower pins and will be sold in July.  This picture was taken after the extra cotton border was removed and my two rows of straight stitching and one row of zig zag was sewn all around.

I have bound round and oval rugs before so this does not intimidate me at all.  After the mat was trimmed up close to the stay stitching I did a gathering stitch all around and gathered up the backing to reduce the fullness evenly at the back.

Then it was time for the cotton binding to hide the backing and make it more eye appealing from the back view.

Cotton binding has one thicker edge which has a built-in gathering thread.  Must admit this one was a little devil trying to locate this time but once found it was no problem gathering the back so that it lays nicely and smooth.  This was a very fun project and I'm on to yet another piece which is still not the lion rug.


My dear friend Evelyn Lawrence has given me a challenge to do a small mat and do it in a Magdalena style.  I drew something out for her and sent it and she has hers done already and I'm still working on mine.  That is something for another post and I'll show you hers and mine.  But until then, ta ta!


Thanks for stopping by.


Saundra