Welcome to Grow Your Blog Day!

Welcome!

Pull up a chair ... 

boot up your computer ...

grab a mug of your favorite brew ...

set it on your mug rug ...

and if the cat grabs your chair as usually happens in my home ...

you pull up another chair ... 

and let's go Blog Happing!

Today I am participating with many other blogs in the annual ...



Here you will find the List of All the Beautiful Blogs Participating!

This huge task is organized by
Vicki @ 2 Bags Full

What did you say?

You do not have a mug rug?

Maybe you are not a quilter and do not even know what a mug rug is?

That will never do!

As a quilter, I am dedicated to making the world warmer by covering it in quilts,
one little quilt at a time.
Fortunately there sew many of us so I do not have to try to do this alone and
I have joined in the big beautiful worldwide online quilting bee.
May you join us and enjoy our quilts.

Read on!

A mug rug is a little quilt to set your cup on.

I made this little paper boat mug rug as a giveaway for this hop.

back of this mug rug

I have always loved making paper  boats.
The idea of a boat make of paper has always intrigued me.
Did your know that, historically, there have been real paper boat manufacturers that made real boats made of paper to carry people?  Read HERE for a lot on info and links on paper boats if this interests you.

I would never actually think of setting out onto a body of water in a boat made of paper, but I like making the little origami boats and floating them on ponds.

I used to do this with my children.  Sometimes we even put little little tea lights in them and floated them at night.  We called them wish boats.  The children would write a secret wish on the paper before they folded them and they would send their wishes out into the world.

If you have never folded a paper boat, HERE are instructions on how to go about it.

 For my quilty friends ...
... or just in case you want to start rugging all you mugs ...
I will  tell you how I made my mug rug.

Any small quilt block makes a nice little coaster for your cuppa.

For this mug rug I used some scrap fabrics left from another project and
I bought this Origami Paper Boat paper pieced quilt block pattern
designed by Right Patterns online HERE
There are also some lovely free block patterns on this site.

To paper piece, you pin little scraps of fabric right to the back of the paper pattern,
stitch right through the paper along the lines.

Add the next scrap

Flip it over and keep adding pieces to the puzzle.
It is a "quilt by number" method construction where you sew the fabrics
on number by number.
Then you piece the sections together to make the block.

This is the front of my origami paper boat quilt block.

Here is the back ...

To make the little quilt, frame the block with other fabrics.
Remove all the tiny pieces of paper.

Get approval from your quilty kitty helper.
This is The Butterfly.
In this picture it is midnight and she is patiently waiting up with me
until I turn off my sewing machine and we can go snuggle under the quilts.

I followed the Butterfly's advice and waited until morning to do the quilting.

I quilted gentle waves on this sea of Faith and stitched a couple of birds in the sky.
Then I added a machine binding.

Ready for giving away!

Paper Boat Mug Rug Giveaway

I am ready to send my Paper Boat Mug Rug off into the world with good wishes to one of my readers, new or old.

This mug rug is made entirely of cotton and is very washable.

I will sail my little Paper Boat Mug Rug to anywhere in the world.

To be eligible to win, all you need to do is leave one lovely comment.
You do not need to be a follower.

As this is a Grow Your Blog Hop,
anyone who is a follower, new friend or old friend, may have one additional entry by leaving a second comment telling how you follow. 

Please be sure that I have an email address to contact you
to tell you if you have won and get your address.

My blog is set to not allow anonymous comments so that the robots cannot find me.
If you do not have an ID, you can still enter by email
at the address listed under "Contact Me" in my toolbar and I will post your comment for you so you have a chance to win.

I am going to pick a winner for this Mug Rug on  February 15th.

To be eligible to win you must comment on this post or email me 
by Midnight EST on February 14th

... also ...

There is still time to enter my
100,000+ Pageviews Giveaway
Click HERE to enter.
The drawing for that giveaway closes on Monday, Jan, 27th
and will be announced on Tues, Jan 28th.

My kitties and I hope you will stay awhile and read about life in our scrapatch.

 If you are a quilter, I have several tutorials under the tab at the top of this page.

I hope you have enjoyed stopping by my blog today.

Thanks for visiting!

My quilty kitties and I hope you will visit us again soon!

Enjoy all the blogs in this big beautiful hop!

~ <3 ~