Shake Your Pom Poms!

Greetings to all! Today is the second day of the "Shake Your Pom Poms" Blog Hop and it's my turn to display my pom pom creations. But first I want to thank Madame Samm from Sew We Quilt for all the work she must go to (that we don't even know about!) to make these blog hops happen and happen successfully. And I also want to thank Thearica from Pig Tales and Quilts for the GREAT cheerleader she's been. She's done a wonderful job of preparing us for this hop and making sure that everything was good to go!

We all know that you can make your own pompoms or you can buy them in bulk or by the yard in long strings. We also know that they come in quite an array of colors. I knew they came in different sizes, but I didn't realize that they also come in little bitty strings! They're SO cute! I knew I had to use them in some way for this blog hop.

My first idea was to make this large hot pad using regular pompoms. As I began working on it, I thought that it might be nice to make matching coasters, using those cute, tiny pompoms. We don't use a tablecloth or placemats on our wooden dining table, so we're always needing something to put underneath hot beverages or hot mugs of soup--these were the perfect choice to go along with the hot pad.

I used this great ruler to cut out the circles--you place the ruler on the fold of the fabric and then place the rotary blade in the size groove you want to cut. (You do have to use a VERY small rotary cutter--18 mm.) I cut 10-inch circles for the hot pad and 4-inch circles for the coasters. I traced circles onto Insul-Bright to use as the batting and then cut those out too.

Originally I had planned to make these reversible, thinking I would sew around the edges, leaving an opening for turning. It quickly became apparent that I would NEVER be able to turn under that curved edge and have it look halfway decent. So instead I cut the back pieces to overlap, with the outer edge turned under about 1/4-inch.

Then I stitched the outside edge in one complete circle. I pinked the edges so they would turn smoothly and turned the whole thing right side out through the overlapped opening in the back.

I was able to sew the larger pompoms onto the hot pad before sewing it together, using a zipper foot. But for the coasters, I used Liquid Stitch and glued the pompoms around the outside finished edge and then topstitched them. To quilt everything, I just drew concentric circles with a Frixion pen and stitched over the lines.

So here's my pompom-trimmed hot pad and coasters! Our large soup mugs fit on them perfectly!

And they can still be reversed (just don't look for the little seam on the back!)

And now for my next project...

I've always wanted to make some of those Kanzashi flowers, so this was another opportunity to try something new. I only made the one flower, but I'm sure I'll be making plenty more. After assembling the flower, I glued a single pompom in the center, surrounded by a ring of those itty bitty pompoms.

My daughter, Laura prefers headbands to barrettes, but this would have worked with either. I hot glued the flower to the headband.

And here's Laura--modeling her new headband! We'll be making lots more of these!

Now be sure to continue hopping along and visiting all the other blogs with their great projects! Here's the schedule for today:

Mhairi

Just Sew Sue

I Piece 2 – Mary

Get More Done...Today--You are here!

Scraps of Life

Dancing Thru-Threads

Needle d

Sowing Stitches

And as always, there's still plenty of time to Get More Done...Today! Have a great one!