Adventures in Mats

Welcome to another installment of Tabi's Creating Adventures! Today we are talking about mats. 

 

To my complete surprise, people like mats. All of this rabbit trail started with me buying fabric for some Fall and Halloween projects and getting extra fabric that didn't fit the theme. The very first mats I made were Halloween themed. I separated the bundle of fabrics that I bought and put the "other themed" fabrics aside at first. Then, I had an idea. I took two of the designs, cut them in half, added some batting, and sewed it up like a very flat pillow. Now, I look for fabrics that would go together as mats.

 

Above and below are some of the first mat I made after the Fall and Halloween themed projects. I had several pieces of the antique advertisements fabric, so I made 6 of these mats: two with red backing, two with blue backing, and two with light brown plaid backing. My son claimed one with light brown plaid backing for himself.  

Below, I think my favorite of this six are the blue backed mats. I like making things practical and reversible.

Below is the light brown plaid backed mat. This is one that I made as a gift.

Now, I got the pictures a little out of order, but here are the first of the Christmas themed mats I made. There will be more Christmas themed at the end, too.

Above and below, I had these fabrics for a while. I think they were parts of bundles of other fabrics I bought several years ago. Either way, this is the last of these fabrics in my stash. I think they work out nicely. I could see them used in the center of a Christmas decorated table or on a coffee table. Unfortunately these are not part of sets. I think I like making sets, too.

This handful of mats will also be part of another post (look for "Spookies" later). I had fun putting all of these together. Halloween was the theme that kicked it all off.

Above and below are the front and back of one mat. There's something about a simple pattern that really makes things like this stand out. 

 

 

Above and below are the front and backs of another mat that I spent much more time on. While it was fun to piece these together, it did take a lot more time than the others. I think I might be inclined to make more piecework mats in the future, I'll just have to plan for it.

 

Now we're back to the Christmas themed mats! For these, I went to the local quilt store after Christmas (2025) and bought a few different fabrics in a couple of different styles. After I gave a handful of items to my brother from the Fall and Halloween sets, my sister-in-law asked if I had any Christmas themed items. There are several people in my family that really like to decorate for different holidays (especially Christmas) and my sister-in-law is one of them. 

Above is the more formally styled set. There are 8 total mats, all of them have the Christmas green print on one side, half have snowflakes on red and the other half have "Merry Christmas" and bells on red for the other side. 

 

Below is the more whimsically styled set. I was originally thinking to make two different sets from these fabrics, but decided that one set was good. There are a total of 9 mats in this set: 3 with red and blue, 3 with red and green, and 3 with blue and green. I could see children enjoying this fun set!

 

Stay tuned for more!

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

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Adventures in Hanging Towels in Christmas Colors

Today's edition of Tabi's Creating Adventures is highlighting Christmas themed hanging towels. These lovely gems are a simple pattern and worked up nicely. Stockinette stitch knitting is probably my favorite stitching pattern. I do enjoy lace quite a bit, but there is something about stockinette that is amazing in its simplicity. I like the look, I like the feel, and stockinette is among the basics of knitting.

Above: A set of four hanging towels, alternated, make a nice visual.

Above: the red hanging towels are lovely by themselves.

Below: the green with red hanging towels have a masculine charm.

Above: Traditional red, green, and white hanging towels are a festive option.

 

Below: Sometimes you just need a special theme. These blue, red, and white snowmen are perfect for a fun Christmas (or winter) addition. 

I hope you enjoyed this little installment!

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

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Adventures in Ornaments

Welcome to another installment of Tabi's Creating Adventures! 

Last time I talked about corner bookmarks. Today it's ornaments! 

 

(Again, I'm not sure what's going on with the sideways pics. It might be a while before I can get them fixed.) 

 

So, scrap fabrics from other projects make great ornaments, corner bookmarks, and a variety of other things depending on the size of the leftover material. Ornaments and corner bookmarks use smaller pieces of scrap fabric.  Sometimes the material lends itself more to ornaments and sometimes more to corner bookmarks, and sometimes the fabric remnants lend themselves to making the loops for the ornaments. I cut and pin for both ornaments and corner bookmarks at the same time. The larger pieces of scrap fabric I cut to use for larger scrap busters. More on that another day. 

Anyway, above is a small selection of ornaments from Halloween, mats (soon to come!), and some non-holiday crafting. These ornaments are the third set I have made.

Here we have the front (above) and back (below) of some slightly larger Christmas themed ornaments. I was able to use the last of this fabric that I have had for quite a while, so if anyone wants something with a similar pattern I'll have to see about ordering from a print-and-ship site. (That might take a while... on my part.) 

I hope you enjoyed this installment on ornaments! If you have any ideas or suggestions for things you'd like to see, please let me know! My contact info is below!

 

Stay tuned for more!

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

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Adventures in Corner Bookmarks (Part 2)

Welcome back to Tabi's Creating Adventures blog! 

 

It's been a while since I posted last. Life has been crazy. We spent the last year getting used to our new normal and recovering from being exhausted. I plan to post blogs monthly going forward!

 

I'm still not sure why the pictures show up sideways. Maybe it has something to do with the pictures being in portrait instead of landscape. I'll work on figuring it out, though it might be a while.  

 

For today's installment, I made a bunch more of the corner bookmarks. These are great scrap busters and pretty easy to make. I tend to keep the pieces that are left from other projects (as most crafters do) and stick them in a box until I'm ready to do something with them. I had several fabrics that paired well together and a few left that didn't really go together. No worries, there will be more projects, more scraps, and more scrap busting to come!  

Above, I had a good number of fabrics in my scraps box. I think my favorites are either the duck and flower combination or the antique advertisement fabrics. 

 

Below, I finished using up some of the Christmas fabrics, so Christmas corner bookmarks made sense. So far, that makes 3 batches of corner bookmarks. (See my previous posts for the first batch.)  

Corner bookmarks is the focus of this post, but I have a couple of other things I like to make with scraps depending on the size of the scraps. Stay tuned for more cool little projects!

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

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Adventures in Colorful Cup Cozies

Welcome to another installment of Tabi's Creating Adventures. Today we have cup cozies, the reversible, quilted version. Below: the cup cozies are turned inside out and are in the same place as the reversed pattern in the Top picture.

These are available in my PayHip shop as they are available. Stay tuned for more!

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

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Adventures in Corner Bookmarks

Welcome to another installment of Tabi's Creating Adventures! 

 

Today's highlight is corner bookmarks. These little guys are great additions to any reader's accessory collection. In the picture below, you can see two of the smaller corner bookmarks displayed on their tags. Some of the bookmarks even have a little reading buddy on them. Small enough to hold in your hand and big enough to mark a page, your favorite reader will appreciate the soft touch and ease of finding their page.

Making these is a great scrap buster! Each bookmark is made with two contrasting fabrics and sewn together like a pillow without stuffing (or a quilt without batting) and folded over to make a nook for the page of a book. The bookmark rests on the corner of the page and is held in place by pressure while the book is closed.

Stay tuned for more!

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

If you would like more information, feel free to connect with me at one of the mediums below:

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Adventures in a Lace Scarf

Today's edition of Tabi's Creating Adventures focuses on a lace scarf. It's absolutely beautiful and the picture here does not do it justice. I enjoy working lace, so this was a nice project to satisfy the lace embrace. My only regret is the yarn I used was a specialty or novelty yarn and it ended up being scratchy in the finished product, which was a surprise to me. I really thought it would be soft when it was finished.

On a side note, I am trying to figure out how to get my pictures to show up correctly in the blog. This one is sideways and I'm not sure what happened.

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

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Adventures in Devorative Pillows - Peacocks

Welcome to Tabi's Creating Adventures! Today we're looking at pillows! I made these for my sister and her husband out of remnant fabric from the apron I made for my sister previously. Some of the fabric (not the peacock design) came from a stack of fat quarters in five colors that were bundled together. The marbled effect on those fabrics is fun and I enjoyed working with them!

Top: the fronts of the pillows.

Bottom: the backs of the pillows.

As you can see, I made 2 of the pillows with pockets, one has a peacock on the front and the back, and one is a little skinny pillow. Like I said earlier, these are remnants from another project. I like stash-buster projects and I hope my sister and her husband like them, too.

Also, I am having trouble getting my pictures to upload upright here. They are upright everywhere else.

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

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Adventures in Potion Containers

Welcome back to Tabi's Creating Adventures! Today we're looking at an experiment in specialty bag making. Inspired by Critical Role's "Bailey's Dice Bag of Hoarding," this gem is intended for use as a potion bottle bag. Each slot has enough space for two potion bottles, but I don't want them to clank together, so the second potion bottle will be in a pouch.

I used a fealty fabric for the bag and the pouches. The pouches are made with my medium size drawstring bag pattern and have rope-ribbon for the drawstring part. (Pardon the distressed background of the table.)

Each pouch fits a potion bottle. Shown below is a Potion of Greater Healing (as per rules for D&D).

I recently received a box of bottles to use for healing potions. Time to get crafting on another project. =-)

Yay, stash-busters!

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

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Adventures in Knit Hats... for Me!

Welcome to another installment of Tabi's Creating Adventures! Today we're looking at hats! 

I had some yarn I had bought years ago, when we lived in Washington state, and finally decided to use it. Both of these yarns were novelty handmade yarns and I only bought one skein of each, so that limited me on what I could make. With that in mind, and a new knit stitch pattern book, I worked up these beauties.

These were fun little projects. In the end, I decided to keep them for myself. After all, I did buy the yarn for me.

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

If you would like more information, feel free to connect with me at one of the mediums below:

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Adventures in Hanging Towels

Happy New Year! Welcome to another installment of Tabi's Creating Adventures!

Today we're enjoying some coffee... er... at least we're looking at some coffee decorated tea towels. Eh, take a look!

So, these bad boys were not quite what I expected. I pulled the towels out of the box and opened them up, and they were not the size I was expecting. They were much wider, and the coffee logo was not centered. In the end we have 4 different work-ups of the same color and pattern scheme. I don't think I'll call these a set, but if someone wants all four, awesome!

As for process, I cut each towel in two (like usual) to make four towels, then I elected to sew the top seam allowance on the sewing machine to make the anchor stitches more secure (I find it helpful). Next, I simple stitched with a wide embroidery needle (it looks like a sewing needle and works to thread yarn through fabric). Finally, crochet! Finishing touches include adding the functional buttons and weaving in the ends of the yarn. 

I experimented with how to fold the towels for the crochet part so they look nice and are usable. At least two of them were folded into quarters before I set the base stitches (with the embroidery needle), and the widest one is folded into almost thirds.

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

If you would like more information, feel free to connect with me at one of the mediums below:

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Adventures in Quilted Cup Cozies

Welcome! Today's post is all about quilted cup cozies. These little gems were inspired by the crochet and knit versions of the cup cozies in combination with my recent endeavors with the Microwave Bowl Hot Pads (MBHP - see the previous blog posts). As I was cutting and preparing to make the MBHPs, I realized I had large enough pieces left over to make some smaller items. Eventually it dawned on me that I could use the paper sleeves from my recent trips to the coffee shop as a pattern for quilted cup cozies. After a few questionable attempts and some wonky stitching, I finally figured out how to piece it all together and make it work well. 

As a note, all of this batch of quilted cup cozies have been gifted. The next batch will have some for sale.

 

 

Above: This is the picture of the "right sides" of all the cup cozies I quilted. 15 in total. They are all reversible. 

 

Below: The next three pictures are of the same cozie. I stitched a tree, an ornament, and a light around this winter holiday cozie.

 

Above: With 4 different cactus cozies, each with green plaid on the reverse side, two were stitched around the cacti. This seemed to work quite well.

Above: This cactus cozie was stitched with the "pebble" design.

Below: I particularly enjoy random "squiggle" quilting.

Above and below: The duck and flower fabrics are the reverses of each other. Super cute!

 

 

Above: Computer fabric on the "right side" with simple stitching.

Below: Computer fabric on the "right side" with a "wave" stitching.

Above and below: The computer fabrics are reversible with the blue fabric (below), and the "squiggles" stitching blue cozie below is reversible with another blue fabric. I really like this picture because it captures the fading of the blue fabric as well as where I closed the fabric into a cozie shape.

Above and below: This bird fabric is super cute and pairs nicely with the floral fabric (two pictures down). One of these is reversible with another bird fabric and the other is reversible with the floral fabric. The floral fabric two pictures down is reversible with another piece of the same floral fabric.

These last three are gifts to the same friends who received the MBHPs of the same fabric.

I hope you enjoyed quilted cup cozies!

Blessings and Peace!

Tabitha

Tabi's Creating Adventures

 

If you would like more information, feel free to connect with me at one of the mediums below:

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