Quilt-As-You-Go Mug Rug

Have you ever heard of mug rugs?  I discovered them recently on a quilter's blog:  bigger than a coaster, smaller than a place mat, intended for a mug and some goodies.  I could certainly use one at my desk.  Seemed like a fun little project to do.  I bet they'd make good gifts, too.

This one used my left-over double disappearing nine patch pieces.  I'm so happy to find a use for these two strips since it killed me to cut them off of my mixer cover project.  The pieces were already quilted so I decided to try quilt-as-you-go to assemble the mug rug.  I found a few different methods and decided to try the one on Instructables.com.

I cut the two strips to ensure the batting was uniform and added material to extend over the batting.  Then I stitched together and quilted a middle section from more mixer cover scraps.

I was surprised how easily and evenly the three pieces were to assemble.  The mug rug lays flat; I can't feel any gap or overlap with the batting.  The back seams were slightly bulky but a hot iron took care of that.

I bound it with the last bit of red fabric from the mixer cover.  There was a lot of hand stitching for such a small project.  The front joints were machine sewn, but the back ones were hand stitched as well as the binding.  I can see why there's quilt-as-you-go instructions that are completely machine stitched.  All that hand-stitching on a large quilt would be time consuming.

Isn't it cute?  I'm pleased with how well the quilt-as-you-go worked.  I don't mind wrestling a large quilt through my Singer, but this gives me the option to tackle a quilt in panels, instead.