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 More Cup Cozies

In today's installment of Tabi's Creating Adventures we are looking at more cup cozies. All of these were made from remnant fabric. My sister requested some microwave bowl hot pads as gifts for her coworkers (Christmas 2025) and I had enough fabric left from those projects to make some smaller items. I hope you enjoy!

Top: Peanuts! Charlie Brown and crew are happy to help keep coffee (or tea) warm. These were made from remnants of the microwave bowl hot pad project.

 

Bottom: Mulan was one of the gift fabrics for my sister's coworker. The purple and green cup cozie is just cute. The blue one is a batik and feels different than other cottons. I was surprised at how well it works for a cup cozie. We also have a beach shells print on the end. All of these are made with remnants from other projects. 

Below: Gothic skulls are a favored theme of my barista friend. She gushed when she saw this design. 

Stay tuned for more!

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

 

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

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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

 

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

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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 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

 

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

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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

 

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

 

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Adventures in Pocket PillowsHere

Did you know that small pillows make great stash busters for fabric? Now you do! To be fair, these were actually quite fun to make. I especially like how the pockets fit on the smaller pillows (note the purple pillows with butterfly pockets). 

Here is a snapshot of all the pillows I made.

 

 

 Here, we again have our panda fabric featured. I think I have about used up all the panda fabric, though it might make one more appearance later. As you can see below, these little pocket pillows are quite small. They are great for decorations, kids bedrooms, and even Tooth Fairy pillows. 

My son claimed the blue chevron pillow above. He thought it was the neatest thing and decided I had made it for him. I can't complain, though, it feels good to have my work appreciated.

The pillow below I made and sent to my brother and sister-in-law... yes, the same brother that works at Texas Tech and asked for the adult bibs. It's thematic... I like it.

 

My sister-in-law also really likes pugs, so I put together this pocket pillow (above) for her. 

Next up, I experimented with ruffles. There are definitely some things to figure out if I want to use ruffles regularly, but it turned out really cute either way.

Again, the solid fabrics worked well with the chevron fabric. The light blue was paired with this same chevron fabric for 2 of the adult bibs. The green fabric also worked out perfectly. 

John Deere anyone? I somehow managed to acquire 2 different John Deere fabrics in my stash.

I had a handful of small-ish purple fabrics that worked great for these pillows. Between the different shades of purple and the butterfly fabric, I had my choice of combinations.

The design for these might seem different or odd, but I think they are cute.  I have also gotten several compliments on them when I had them out for display. I especially like the "crooked" pocket... it is like an extra accent.

The final pillow (below) does not have a pocket. I found the floral fabric a little too nice to cover. Also, it reminds me of my husband's grandma. I think this pillow would have looked nice in her living room. She had such lovely taste in her decorations.

 I hope you enjoyed these pillows! See you next time!

 

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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