Paper Pieced Insulated Trivet & Visit to Urban Craft Uprising

Well that's a mouthful!

Star cut out from an 8" circle of cardstock

I'm doing a bit more paper piecing here and there I love that you can make anything you can dream of, but I cant draw so drawing pictures then deconstructing them isn't a walk in the park and I have to keep it simple.  Luckily there's wiser people out there than me for when I want to upgrade to complicated projects! Until then I'll just cut things out of cardstock with trial and error ;)

I used La Dee Da Floradots in Saffron from Free Spirit Fabrics for the star.  My plan was to have a well graduated circle of light to dark blue around it, but I didn't stop to make sure I had that before cutting things out (I do NOT do so well with the planning stages of fabric choice...) so it got a bit wonky and I didn't really get a good mix between small and large prints either, but I'm still happy with how it turned out.  Art gallery's Pure Elements in empire yellow made a good match for the binding,  which was sewn on with pearl cotton thread.

Since I figured I may as well make this Christmassy I used one holiday tree fabric on the front, and for the back one of the Christmas fabrics my mother in law gifted me.  It's sandwiched as following:
Backing fabric
Layer of cotton batting
Layer of insulated batting
Paper pieced star
I'm impressed with how well the insulated batting works, and a yard of it is taking me a long way, I've made two potholders, 4 trivets, and still have enough for a couple more things.

Urban Craft Uprising December 2012

I made it to Seattle's Urban Craft Uprising for the first time last weekend with my sister.  It was a great show, but I was a little dissapointed that while there were vendors of all sorts, there weren't that many people selling handmade goods of the crafty variety.  Jewelry, art, food products, ceramics, carnivorous terrariums, amazing clothing, but the only handmade vendor that didn't seem to be geared towards felty animal crafts was geared towards baby stuff.  I think i was hoping to get a lot of inspiration at the show, but mostly I just emptied my wallet!

I came away with $40 in salt :| $12 boxes of macaroons (that got crushed in my purse :( ), a bit of art including some fun from LaRu and some stocking stuffers for my husband.  Now that everybody can use their smart phones to take debit cards, the world has become a much more dangerous place for my budget!