For the last few days the weather here in the Seattle area has been BEYOND hot! Yesterday, an all time record was set at 104 degrees and today it is going to be even hotter! Usually, we have one, maybe two days above 90 degrees, and sometimes we don’t even reach 90 during the summer!
Because the summers are usually mild compared to other parts of the country, most people in the Northwest do NOT have air conditioning. And guess what, I don’t have it either!
I am sitting under a ceiling fan and I am having a standing fan blowing on me. It’s till warm in my house – 84 degrees at 10:30 am – but the air is moving and it doesn’t feel too bad.
As this heat wave started, I began making some more neck coolers for myself and my family. I wrote about making the neck coolers a few years ago. For the post on how to make them Click Here
I am also keeping myself hydrated / caffeinated by drinking liberal amounts of iced tea and iced coffee! For a post on how I make my iced coffee Click Here The “recipe” is towards the bottom of the post.
After making my large glass(es) of iced beverage, the sweat running off the glass was awful (I forgot how much iced drinks sweat!) and leaving puddles of water where ever they were placed. Which is not good when you are trying to piece a quilt top under the ceiling fan!
I thought to myself, “I need a coaster for under my sweaty glass!” And, of course, could I FIND a coaster? No way!
Then I was looking around my work area and spied these two fabrics from a patriotic quilt top I am working on.
Click on any photo for a larger view
As I looked at those fabrics, I “saw” a four patch coaster! And guess what I did? I made one – or a few of them!!
Here is what I did – I started by cutting the two fabrics into 1 – 3 inch x width of fabric (wof) strip and stitching the two pieces together along the long edges. I pressed the seam to the darker side. Then I sub-cut the strip into 3 inch sections the full length of the strip. I got 13 – 3 inch pieces from the strip. This will make 6 – 5 inch (finished size) coasters.
Then I laid out the strips to form the pattern
Then I stitched them together to form a 5-1/2 inch, 4 Patch block
But what about the quilting? I could have put them on the longarm, but that was too much of a hassle. And, there is no fan in my quilting room! So I went “old school” and quilted them on my home sewing machine! Yes, I still know how to do that!!!
I found some scrap batting (Warm & White) and scrap fabric to use as the backing, layered everything together, put my walking foot on my sewing machine and had fun!!
I kept the quilting super simple. One coaster I did “modern” stitching straight lines with white thread and the others I did straight lines with blue thread in the stars and following the “waves” of the stripes with white thread in the wavy fabric.
Last, but not least, I trimmed the blocks and put some binding on – again fabric from my scrap bag and I had quilted, patriotic drink coasters!
Now it is time to make a iced beverage, I’m thinking iced tea for now, and put my patriotic quilted coasters to work!
PS – I had the red and white wavy fabric in my stash. If you don’t have fabric like this, you can make your own red and white stripe fabric by cutting strips of red and white fabric into 1 inch strips and then stitching them together to form a striped fabric.
Here is an illustration of how this block would look. Note the placement of the position of the stripes on each part of the 4-Patch. Or you can have all the stripes in the same position.
Remember, you are the Queen (or King) of your own quilting world, and, as Queen (or King) you can do what you want when making your quilts!
If you make some Patriotic quilted coasters, send me a photo and I can post them on this blog.
Say cool and keep quilting!
Cindy Roth, Quilter 
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