diy quilted dish drying mat
It must be Germany fabric week around here, because this project features another fabric from the pile I brought home last summer. This is an American fabric, not German or even European, but it’s still a special reminder of that trip.
I made this dish mat for two reasons: first, I wanted the mat to fit perfectly underneath my drying rack; and second, I was getting really tired of spending money on furnishings and supplies for my apartment (it’s like the list never ends!). This was a quick and easy project that helps me showcase a beloved fabric in a super useful way.
I took an old white kitchen towel that wasn’t so white anymore, chopped it in half and cut off its binding. I used two layers of towel in between my cotton outer layers.
the quilting was just disastrous!
I quilted along the lines of the spatula pattern, and everything shifted while I was quilting. It was a mess! But I just trimmed the edges so they were square again. No worries.
As you can see, the stripe of the towel shows through on the yellow side of the dish mat. That’s the bottom, so I don’t care!
I cut my own binding from the yellow cotton – straight binding, not on the bias. Because of the thickness, I used Heather Bailey’s Quilt Binding Tutorial, a great way to flawlessly bind quilted items, especially when you’re using homemade binding.
After stitching the binding right-to-right to the front of the mat, I decided to go for it and secure the binding to the back side by machine, rather than hand-stitching. I used a ton of clips and managed to catch all the binding, which always feels great.
Of course, in day-to-day life, the mat hides underneath my dish rack like this. But the cheeriness of the bright spatulas manages to peek through my mountains of dishes, and my countertop stays dry. A win for sure. I’m planning to make another to have on hand for baking days, when I have too many dishes for the dish rack and am forced to lay them out on a towel on the counter. This is a much more elegant solution!
is easy to find.
turning tool for everything. I use it for narwhal tusks, dress straps, alpaca legs, drawstrings… things that I would have never been able to deal with before the Turn-it-all came into my life. I swear, I’m not their spokesperson, I just love whoever invented this.
. It has an extremely sharp blade, so it’s definitely not a kid-friendly tool, but it does an excellent job of quickly ripping through threads when you’ve made a big mistake.
are like binder clips that are specially made for sewing and quilting. They’re great for thicker fabrics or multiple layers that can’t be easily pinned.
, $36; 
, $15; 
, $25
and my 
. The walking foot is most commonly used for quilting, since it helps keep multiple layers of fabric from bunching, but it’s also useful for long seams like on curtains or other home dec projects. I use it all the time. The invisible zipper foot is, of course, for installing invisible zippers so that they are truly invisible.
is key for organized sewing. For a dust-free option, I managed to snag a 
yet, you are seriously missing out.
