I have an old chest of drawers that used to belong to my granparents, it has deep wide drawers which are hopeless for keeping clothes in. You always want/need what is at the bottom back corner.
Of the other two drawers one has yarn it, mostly ends of balls from past projects and a few skeins patiently waiting to be knitted. The other is full of material, again pieces left from projects, or pieces acquired/given to me that have already been made into something but would be perfect to be made into something else someday. There is also a small pile of old clothes beyond repair that are, the could be used to make something one day pile. One piece is a pair of old linen trousers of mine worn for years but now completely worn through on the seat and rather grubby I noticed when I got them out to have a good look at them recently.
I have been wanting to make some mats to put hot drinks on for a while now, we have a few round cork ones that look like a mouse has had a good chew at, they haven't I don't think but I wouldn't put it past those mice that moved in a couple of years ago. We also have a few old CDs that do a serviceable job but they have a hole in the middle which means that a small part of the surface they are on still gets hot, one of our tables does not like this. So I had some linen and an idea and this is what I came up with................
I had no template and so kind of guessed based on the one square mat we own. They have a section of towel in the middle to provide the padding. The towel is an old stained one that had been relegated to the mopping up messes pile. As the linen was a pale colour I thought they would look good with an appliquéd shape on them, I went for an apple but you could sew anything you fancy, a circle, a leaf, maybe? If you don't fancy applique you could just miss that part out and make them from some patterned material.
So I cut two squares, from the linen and one from the towel. The first two I made were 4" squares, the third a 5" square. I sewed the appliqué shape to one of the linen squares. Then I placed the linen squares right sides together with the towel square on top, pinned them and sewed around 7/8ths of the edges leaving a 1/8 of a side unsewn. I turned it the right way out through the hole and hand sewed the edge up. Voila a mat. I now have three, in three different sizes it would seem.............
I have cut some squares to make some more they are patiently waiting on a shelf.