Have a cup, stay awhile

Last week was our last week with our wonderful nanny, who had been with us for almost a year. It's crazy to think how much time she'd spent with B and how he's changed in that time (he was about 10 months old when she started and is now almost 21 months).

Before she left, I wanted to make her a little something to remember us. She's going off to be a school therapist, so a mug rug for her school desk seemed appropriate.

I knew I wanted to incorporate one of my fox fabrics as a nod to B (whose middle name is Fox). The fussy cut print is Foxy Too, a personal favorite (and previously seen in other projects for B here and here).

I built out from there into an offset log cabin, following this great tutorial from Stitching by Starlight. I wanted to pull out the aqua and red from the fox print, but I didn't want to go too crazy with the colors (as Natalie's a big fan of the neutrals), so I incorporated a lot of grays, too. It was really fun to pull so many fabrics from my stash.

For the back, I strayed from the tutorial because I wanted to incorporate this great coffee print that worked so well with the mug rug idea and color scheme. This scrap was left over from the apron I made for my sister a few years ago (the print is Robert Kaufman Metro Kitchen Coffee Cups in White, but good luck finding it).

Above the coffee cups, I combined 1" strips of several of the fabrics from the front and then finished off the end with some Remix Ovals in Aqua.

For the quilting, I couldn't resist doing the diagonal straight line quilting again (because that's my modus operandi this week, apparently). I used white thread to help it blend in.

I used a gray and white chevron (from Barbara Jones's Cruzin' collection, previously used on the back of the Les Amis quilt) for the binding, and I love how it turned out. I wish I had more of this one left because I think it works great as a binding and would make the perfect impact on a big quilt — interesting but not too crazy.

I wrapped it up using a little red and white butcher's twine. Here's to coffee, cookies, and wonderful nannies that we'll never forget. We love you, Natalie!