April Showers Blog Hop, My Day!

Hello, Welcome to GrecoMara, I am Mara and I live in Greece!

Today is My Day to share my mug rugs for the April Showers Mug Rug Hop.

Thank you to Madame Samm for this fun hop 

and thank you to our cheerleader Erin!

April Showers, mmm... makes me think of clouds, rain, rainbows, umbrellas, green trees, flowers, renewal and re-birth.

RAINBOWS

My very first ever mug rug creation is on it's way to Mexico as part of Joy Handmade Swap over at My Giant Strawberry

It is probably a little large for a mug rug at 8" by 10', I think it is cute though, little rainbow umbrellas under silver clouds.  "Every cloud has a silver lining" and "Life is like a rainbow, you need both the rain and the sun to make it's colors appear" are some rainy day quotes that I like.

For the cloud and the handle I used felt and for the rainbow color, 7 total, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple I used Riley Blakes medium dots.  The colors don't show up so well, but that's what they are.

GREEN TREES

Today is my husband's birthday so I thought I would make him a mug rug too, besides I am tired of him always using my turtle mug rug.  If my husband was American his favorite quote would probably be "Money doesn't grow on trees", lucky for me he doesn't know that quote or I would hear it all of the time, but now he has a money tree, that is a money tree mug rug.

Loving my embroidery thread!

And with his very own turtle, the cutest turtle button you will ever see, from ButtonMad.

Such a happy turtle, we have lots of turtles in Greece, not only water ones but land ones also, and the babies are now hatching and my kids have so much fun finding them.

Oh did you want to see the whole mug rug, here it is.

Since it is a birthday would you like cake with that...

or are you a cupcake kind of person?

I sized the tree trunk to perfectly fit my husbands favorite glass and wouldn't you know it, it also is the correct size for his beer!  I also made it a little small so it could fit on our "bar" spot that you see it sitting on next to the table, measuring in at 5.5" by 7.5".
I personally like cupcakes, as do my kids, especially these "baby" sized ones.

RE-BIRTH

I know it is getting to be a long post but stick with me, because now I need your help, which mug rug should I send to my sister-in-law?

You see she lost her father a few months ago and I can't be physically there for her, but she wrote a beautiful and moving memorial about her father, I would send you to the link but it is private, but I have taken a few of her quotes, "One of my favorite childhood memories of my dad was when I was about five or six years old. I would wake up early and walk into the living room to see my dad sitting in his recliner drinking his coffee. He would ask me to come to sit on his lap, and he would give me little tastes of coffee. I always felt so special and grown up getting to drink coffee with my Daddy early in the morning." and " I suppose I will make a cup of coffee and remember him."  I thought it only fitting that she should have a mug rug, to rest her cup of coffee while she remembered her father.  I also wanted to represent this quote in the Bible, 

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, The Comfort of Christ's Coming,

¹³ Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. ¹⁴ For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. ¹⁵ According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words.
But which one should I give her, 
 

The Hexagon

Pat's Fabrics

This one is named after Pat at Life in the Scrapatch, since I won all 4 of these fabrics from her during the "In your words blog hop", they came in so handy.

 or Reverse Applique

All 3 of them have the same gorgeous fabric on the back.

It says:  Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
courtesy of Pat!

So what do you think?

If you want more details, I have written another very lengthy post below:

 

 Make sure you go visit all of the other wonderful and talented bloggers out there today.

Wednesday, April 17

Jen @ Quilter in the Closet

Marjorie @ Marjorie's Busy Corner

Elita @ A Pieceful Perspective

Green @ So Sew Green

Mara @ Greco Mara  You Are Here

Wendy @ Why Knot Kwilt?

Gmama Jane @ GrandMama's Stories

Debby @ Debby Kravotil Quilts

Britt-Inger @ Hill Valley Quilter

Connie @ Freemotion by the River

Beth @ Words and Stitches

Kathy @ iHeartSquishy

Inspiration and Tutorials I used for the mug rugs

I didn't want to make a super long post for the blog hop but here is more information if you want to read where I got the tutorials or websites that I used for inspiration and help.

For my very first mug rug I really wanted to try out Foundation Paper Piecing, I have never done it before but thought it would be pretty easy to design my own umbrella for a paper pieced mug rug.  Boy was I wrong, I totally goofed it ended up being huge, or at least bigger than I planned.

and next to the umbrella mug rug that I decided to do instead

My daughter likes her new stuffie

I'm going to make a few more of these for Hopeful Threads April Project, Fluff for Foster Care.  They don't take much material to make and they will be great gifts for the older girls because I love the quote from Lyman Frank Baum in his story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

"Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue

and the dreams that you dare to dream

really do come true."

Hope, Faith and Love, 3 words that are needed for the foster children and 3 words that are also representative of my next project that I had wanted to do for my sister-in-law.

I saw this quilt on Pinterest and immediately wanted to do something like that.   But I didn't really like how the black outline looked on the hexagons, so I tried it a little differently and did the second one using Pat's fabrics appliqued on, that was a little better but I still thought it was missing something so then I tried a technique that I saw during a blog hop using reverse applique.  I thought this would be a perfect way to outline a few words chosen from the quote in the bible and I mixed them up using Tagxedo, printed it on linen fabric by taping some to paper and sending it through my printer the regular way, it's not very water proof, but it works.

Tagxedo cloud reverse appliqued sewed in.

 The embroidered hand prints (my sons, traced with a Frixion pen) just waiting to cut the fabric out so you can see the words revealed underneath.  Using the gorgeous and so easy to sew with Presencia thread that I won from Madame Samm and given to me by Janes Fabrics.

I carefully cut out the palm prints and then hand sewed a few stitches around (without tucking the fabric underneath) to keep the fabric from raising.

One hand says Hope and one Love

My fabric was at the bottom and so it was easy to cut into, but if you have it in the middle of a project then it is a good idea to put a pin in before sewing the top layer of fabric on, so it is easier to cut out and therefore not catch the fabric below, this project was pretty easy and my favorite.

I used different binding methods for each one of my Re-Birth mug rugs, the hexagon one I flipped inside out, Pat's I used the fabric from the back and brought it forward tucked it under and sewed 2 lines around it.

Really super easy to do.

 And the Reverse one I added strips to the edges and then machine sewed it to the front and then hand sewed it to the back, I wanted more control on that one so I wouldn't miss the words on the back, since it is all different sizes.  If I just used a normal binding it would have covered up a few letters, as is I lost the F in faith, but that's because the designer did not take into effect that people would be cutting out the quote and she put the F right on the selvedge.

I used this tutorial to make 5 yards of bias tape out of 1 fat quarter and this helpful printable cardstock bias tape maker, you can print it in sizes .5 inch (used on my husbands green tree mug rug) and 1 inch. (used on the rainbow mug rug) to make lots and lots of binding.

Arthur's Birthday

We celebrated Arthur's birthday last Sunday on the 17th, he turned 42 (therefore the 4 candles and 2 strawberries). He enjoyed his favorite food - Spaghetti.
About 2 weeks earlier we found Betty Crocker cake mix and frosting at a grocery store in Trikala, I was so excited, and everyone enjoyed the chocolate devils cake with vanilla frosting. I can't wait to go back and get some more boxed cake mixes (although this is the only flavor they had).

Yummy! the kids inherited my weak spot for sweets, oh boy! P.S. notice the addition of the high chair, baby Kat climbs right out of it and doesn't like it, but Nik loves it even though it is a little small and will fight his sister for the rights to sit in it and the majority of the time I let him win.
Since we ate this cake all in one day, on Monday I made Arthur's favorite homemade cake. It's just a plain yellow cake but super easy to make and just as delicious.