Mug Rug Swap ~ What fun!

I am a sometimes member of the forums at The Quilt Show website; I love love love the DVDs of the shows, and really need to just commit to being a full time Star member so I can watch the shows as they debut on the computer, instead of waiting for the DVDs, especially now that I'm back in the US and my internet will actually support streaming videos like that. The classes and wealth of information are more than worth it!

Luckily for me, though, even a Basic member (which is free), can participate in the forums. I've "met" some fantastic women there, learned a lot, enjoyed the friendship, and treasure the ability to ask any quilting question I might have and know I'll soon have several answers. Yay!

Part of the fun recently has been a "Mug Rug" swap. This is a very informal swap, where we each just said "sure, I can send one..." and then people reply and say, "Oh, can I have one from you? That would be lovely!" and back & forth, back & forth, back & forth it goes. When you ask to receive, you also agree to send one back, and so Mug Rugs have been flying across continents for a while now.

Now that I'm back in the US, I finally was able to throw my name in and participate instead of watching the fun from the sidelines. Yay!

I wanted to send Brazil-themed Mug Rugs, and bought this fabric for this project before I left Brazil. Beautiful butterflies, which I fussy cut and made the centerpiece of the mug rugs, and then assorted Brazilian scrap fabric to pair with each one. I used a much-coveted fabric on the back, which is in the pattern of my favorite Brazilian cobblestone sidewalks. I have a large amount of this, because I have a quilt in mind for "one day" and this will be the back of that quilt, once I get there.

I used a cute Flip Flops fabric for the binding as well, since it is fairly representative of Brazil to me.

I did decorative stitching on each one, and outlined the butterflies in the quilting as well. 

The Mug Rugs I received back have been stunning! I feel like mine are rather inadequate in comparison, but this was the best I could do at the moment. Life for me is swamped with moving, and getting ready to move again, and adjusting, and settling in, and I'm still not fully unpacked (we aren't unpacking much until we get into our final home, which should be soon!), and, well, this is what I could accomplish just now. Maybe later I'll do this again and spend a bit more time on something  more intricate.....