Thursday, December 18, 2025

Christmas mat finish

Bonjour and welcome! 😃I hope that you've had a good week. Nope, I'm not ready, not at all!!!! I did however finish my second Christmas mat.

Hand-stitched mats

For the November Table Scraps Challenge, I made two very scrappy Christmas mats. I had a wonderful time stitching them with a running stitch. I finished the second one this week.

Two Christmas mats with running stitches

For the first mat I used only a couple of yarns - green perle cotton and red linen. All of the stitches went in the same direction. For the second mat, I wanted to shake things up 😁. I used many different colours of both perle cotton and linen yarn. The stitches went in many different directions, including in a circle and diagonally!

Second mat with running stitches

First mat - in two colours and yarns

Hand-dyed silk thread

Last week I received this amazing hand-dyed silk thread. I ordered it from Karen Turner in the UK. I chose a package of 5 pink/purple silk thread. They are so pretty! I did start stitching with one of them.

Hand-dyed silk thread by Karen Turner

Stitching a leaf on my not-so-daily stitching project

My stitches are not very good - I'll need more practice, and possibly a finer needle, to get the hang of stitching with such fine thread.

A Win!

I want to thank Gail of Quilting Gail and Sandra of mmm quilts for the lovely Arabesque quilt pattern. Gail made a sample for Sandra's new quilt pattern and I won the draw. You can see Sandra's quilt, "Happy Christmas" in FM Mavericks below 😊

What I learned

I didn't even think of stitching the first mat in different directions, but when I got to the second mat, I just wanted to do something different!
I stitched with three colours of linen yarns. Even if it was tricky getting them into the needle, I love the heavier stitches.
The Snowman in the photo was my mother's. We teased her about it because it had the same hat as she did 😀
Stitching with the silk thread takes getting used to. I had forgotten how fine it is. It's lovely using it as a double strand but then you really have to watch the tension. No worries, it's well worth it and it will be fun playing with!
There is a local yarn shop that is closing down next month, because the owner is retiring. I've been in there twice in the last few weeks. The green yarn that I used for the leaf above is a very fine cotton yarn from Japan. I love stitching with yarn that isn't necessarily intended for embroidery. It's so much fun experimenting!

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 562 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a productive week! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts made a wall hanging and a runner using Angela Walter's panels.

Kat's FMQ wall hanging panel

Kat's FMQ from the back

Runner panel FMQ by Kat

You can see the FMQ on the
back of Kat's runner panel

Sandra from mmm quilts has a new pattern, Arabesque, that she quilted up using lovely Christmas fabrics. Happy Christmas is a lovely wall hanging! Sandra stitched-in-the-ditch and then some meandering.