Felt Penny Rug Pattern for my 100th Blog Post!

UPDATE 20.12.15: I've decided to take an unusual step for me and update this post as it's all of a sudden received a lot of traffic, bless the heart of the lady who pinned the link to it :-)

So I thought I would add some pictures of the penny rug that I went on to create and maybe a couple of others.

Morning!

I knew today was auspicious and I've just discovered this my 100th blog post - so that's a pretty good start! (Can't believe how far I've come since that 1st Blog Post back in 2012!)

I'm working on something completely new for me - a penny rug (candle mat) - for those who haven't come across penny rugs before, they were made popular during the Civil War in America, when women would use scraps of material (clothes, bedspreads, etc) and using pennies (hence the name) and other coins, they would make table decorations, runners, bedspreads, wall hangings, etc with patterns made out of the cloth circles, all sewn together.

These are examples of some of the early penny rugs:

Source: The Savvy Seeker

Source: York Mountain Mercantile Blog

Source: Primatives By The Light of The Moon Blog

These early style penny rugs are very primitive and don't necessarily appeal to that many people nowadays, but the more modern style is very popular in America and is starting to filter over here (the UK) with the increase of hand crafted homewares rising in popularity.

Here are some beautiful examples that I've seen whilst doing some research for creating my own pattern:

Source: Flickr

Source: Pinterest

Source: Etsy

As we're approaching Easter, I thought I'd try an Easter Bunny Rabbit pattern for my first Penny Rug pattern.... here are a couple of work in progress shots:

Please excuse the 'not-great-taken-with-my-phone' pics, but I'm keen to get on with it and try to finish it up today... Hmmmm....!

Hopefully I'll have the pattern ready for my Etsy Shop by the weekend.

UPDATE 20.12.15:

And here are some pics of the finished Easter Bunny Penny Rug:

I was really really pleased with how well this turned out for a first pattern and my Mummy was the recipient of the sample rug and she said she's had lots of lovely comments about it.

There is a link to it in my Etsy Shop and also my Craftsy Shop

If you want to have a look at the other Penny Rug patterns I've created since, they're all in the Etsy shop too.