qayg patchwork mat

I had no plans for sewing today. In fact, I specifically planned this to be a day devoted to catching up on my housework and cleaning everything in sight. Yes, I do get ridiculous and totally unrealistic ideas like that on a regular basis :).

I didn't manage to stay away from my sewing machine for long, though. In fact, after just a bit of sweeping I suddenly noticed how messy the floor around our kittie's food bowls gets. Which, of course, meant I needed to make a mat for them asap.

So much more fun than cleaning, don't you think?

I simply dumped one of my scrap bins on the floor, pulled out an array of strings, and used a quilt as you go (qayg) technique to make this easy to make mat.

Once I had a large enough patchwork, I trimmed it to a 13" x 22" rectangle. I then placed backing fabric right side down on a table and lay finished patchwork right side up on top. I smoothed the layers out and pinned all the way around the perimeter to prevent the layers from shifting. I used a 1/8" seam allowance to baste the layers together, trimmed the backing, and attached the binding the same way I would for a quilt.

Easy - peasy.

I love the way it turned out. And, since this was a pretty quick project, I still managed to get quite a bit of cleaning done as well. All in all, a pretty successful day.

In case you'd like to learn more about quilt as you go technique, you can check out my tutorial for qayg trivets by clicking here.

As always, thank you all for stopping by and reading. Svetlana