A penny short!

Last spring, I showed you a couple of projects that I was working on (click here to see post) and it took me awhile but I got them finished. Last week I showed you the patchwork table runner and I can cross it off my list with a big check mark. The other item I had started then was this bunny penny rug (pattern available here at Better Homes and Gardens quilt site) you see below. I actually finished it over Memorial Day weekend but didn't post it because......I'll get to why in a minute. Some of you may remember that I recently entered it in the County Fair and mentioned that while it got a blue ribbon, I had a mistake in it. This is a post about "see what I did and then you won't make the same mistake"!!!

My first mistake came when I cut all the pieces. I was careful when I cut them.........or so I thought. There were 18 pennies that were to go around the oval with the bunny in it. Count those pennies.............yep, I'm one short! You see, when I got them all stitched and laid them out around the oval, I realized that I must have cut each one just a little too big and so they didn't fit together well at all. My solution? ....... just take one out and so I did! But you can see that I was stitching every other one in blue or pink Perle cotton. My carefully laid out penny rug was not coming together at all! I finally came up with a pattern that pleased me and I pinned all the pennies in place with safety pins and sewed them all in place.........just like you see here.........

and then I looked at it and realized the oval was at the wrong angle and it may not show too much in this photo but it was obvious in person. Soooooooooooooooo.............I unstitched all the pennies and pinned them all again and within a few days, I had finished it again. :-)

Here's the penny rug with all the pennies placed right (still missing that 18th one). Anyone judging the penny rug might not notice there were an uneven number of pennies and might assume I just meant it to be that way! I like things even and orderly so it sort of bugs me. I really like the little thing, though, because I love the color of the wool. It started as a really nice piece of off-white wool that I painted with SetaColor fabric paints (I bought the product at Michael's). You can use it on cotton, wool and/or woolfelt and you can get some great fabric colors all of your own design.
So, don't do as I did...........count your pennies and carefully cut them. Then pin them even more carefully before you stitch them!
My next post will be a little bit about color and woolfelt. I'm working my way up to dyeing that gorgeous cream white wool I bought last winter.
All for now.........
Sandi