Quilted Bed Foot Warmer and Free Design

No one likes cold feet–not at a wedding nor in bed.

There are many ways to keep your toes warm, like this. Who wouldn’t love that? But you need a lot of puppies.

Or you could do this:

There are risks with this method. Mildred “Mimi” Turner almost burned down our hotel (and her feet) when we were teaching in Australia’s cold Blue Mountains.

This quilted foot warmer is risk free, readily available, pretty, and fun to make. It is also my latest project for Brother’s blog, Stitching Sewcial, for which I am a paid sewing specialist (this is a required disclosure). The blog post includes a FREE download link for the quilting design used for the spaghetti bias Celtic knot in the center of each square. But more about the special use of that later.

The design measures 7.76 x 7.87″.

The primary design, which is built in to the Brother Dream Machine, has intrigued me since this technological wonder moved into my sewing room. With March being National Quilting Month (at least in the sewing world) I jumped at the opportunity to use the design in a quilted piece for Stitching Sewcial.

A complete tutorial with photo illustrations is posted on the blog. Still, there are a few tips I’d like to discuss.

Basically, each block of the foot warmer consists is composed of 4 squares of this embroidery design.

Three of these blocks with 2″ sashing and borders made the foot warmer’s length measure 60″.

The lovely blue/green/gold print was a piece I had on hand, just barely enough to finish the project. The strips for the spaghetti bias require a lot of fabric. The little gold metallic circles do not show up in the photo, but they add a nice bit of glitz to the print.

I love spaghetti bias and the unique dimension and extra touch it offers. I thank both Connie Palmer and Kari Mecca, renowned designers and teachers, for introducing me to its delight and many uses. While it can be purchased in a huge array of colors and prints, often I find it necessary to make my own, as I did on a child’s dress with a companion dress for an AG doll.

Much as I love my Tiger Eye and Turn Tube set, I sometimes wrestle to get the tube turned. This is probably due to the fact that I like to cut the bias strips very long as a seamed bias piece is not recommended. It creates too much bulk for the tube.

On this project I had more trouble than usual, likely because of the metallic in the print. Sorting through my miscellaneous tools, I came across my loop turner and found that for this fabric it was a better gadget than my Fast Turn set. I think that will be my go-to tool now after using my Tiger Eye.

The FREE quilting design offered at Stitching Sewcial was used not to quilt, but to use as a guide for my spaghetti bias. It was stitching in the center after the squares were pieced. Then the bias was first glued in place over the design and then stitched down.

Let me tell you, I was tickled pink when I realized that I could use many machine embroidery quilting designs for spaghetti bias templates! And better yet, the designs can be edited to whatever size you need without concern about the length of the stitches.

Of course, you also could simply print the edited quilting design and trace it on your fabric. But my tracing would never be as precise as the machine embroidered piece.

Finally, a gold button was sewn to the center of the Celtic knot to emphasize the gold in the print. It also covers any less than perfect corner seam matches. But it just seemed to me that the center needed a button.

I first tried a plain, flat button with a shank but it flopped around. So I had to use a 4-hole gold button. This arrangement also creates a pretty frame for a monogram on a pillow.

So this is what has kept me busy for the past two weeks. We’ve had gorgeous spring weather, but a few cold nights calling for a bed foot warmer.

I sew better with warm feet. And I’ve done more sewing since my previous post, which I will share with you later.

Easter is just around the corner. I’d love to hear about what you are sewing.