Spring is in the air! The first fun holiday of the season is almost here – St. Patrick’s Day! In yesterday’s post I went on a Stitch adventure with PFAFF’s passport 3.0 and used many of the preset stitches to make a selvege stitch sampler.

I was inspired by the hearts of February to re-purpose them into shamrocks for March. Today I’m going to add a shamrock to my stitch sampler and make it into a mug rug.

I used three hearts to make my shamrock. To make the heart template I cut out half a heart shape on a 2½” square of paper folded in half on the diagonal. If you don’t want to make your own template, I have included a link for you to use my template. I hand cut the shamrock stem and have included this template as well.

My green fabric was also cut into 2½” squares. I folded a fabric square on the diagonal then tucked it into the folded heart and cut around the template. I repeated this step with the other two squares of green fabric to make a total of 3 hearts.

I lined up the stem on one of the rows of decorative stitches, then placed the two side hearts on top. The final step was to place the third heart on top of the edges of the other hearts.

I used black as my thread color to boldly outline the shamrock. Stitch 27 is the Machine Blanket Stitch on the PFAFF passport 3.0. Before stitching, I pressed the needle down button. As I worked my way around the shamrock there were points where it was easier to keep going in the opposite direction. Lucky for me, Stitch 28 is the reverse blanket stitch! I lifted the presser foot to pivot my fabric then pressed the needle down button to raise the needle, selected Stitch 28, then pressed the needle down button and continued stitching.

To finish the mug rug I cut backing fabric the same size – 8″ x 9″. Then I switched to the 0A presser foot, put the two fabrics right sides together and sewed around the edge leaving a turning gap.

I snipped the corners then pulled the fabric through the gap, pushed out the corners and pinned the gap closed. I used the red ⅛” guide mark on the 0A presser foot to top-stitch around the edge, closing the gap securely inside the stitching.

I made my other stitch sampler into a mug rug too. For this one I used matching green thread to secure the shamrock appliques. Making two mug rugs doubles my luck – and gives me the opportunity to gift one to a friend!

ThePFAFF passport 3.0 makes me feel lucky every time I sit down to sew – every project stitches up great! Now it’s time to make some tea or other hot beverage and celebrate all your blessings while using your lucky mug rug