Placemats

Last time I made placemats, I bought a piece of heavy double woven cotton upholstery fabric (blue with cream dots on one side, cream with blue dots on the other.) Cut rectangles about a third larger than the final size. Trimmed the corners to a nice curve. Made bias binding in a pretty contrasting blue/cream fabric and finished the edges. Then washed in hot water. They shrank down to the right size and developed a nice quilty texture. Roberta in D

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I usually make placemats for a housewarming gift. I make 4 blocks about 12" finished, then add a strip of coordinating fabric on two opposite sides to make a rectangular placemat. If I want an oval mat, I use a small plate as a corner template. Mark and cut one corner, then fold to mark the remaining corners. The centre block can be as simple or complex as you like. Quilter's Cache has lots of patterns, organized by size and mark with degree of difficulty.

On Aug 1, 1:09 am, Dee in Oz wrote:

I have made dozens of place-mat settings for myself and gifts. They consist of alternating blocks of color finished to 1-1/2" square and sewn into strips of appropriate size and then sewn together into strips, fill with light polly patting, pinned to an appropriately colored back. Bind whole piece with a complimentary color binding. Just stitch in the ditch the whole thing and you are good to go. It is a good way to use up that extra cut off batting left over from quilt projects. If you set the process up on a production basis of cutting all pieces out and stacking them up for use, before assembly, you should be able to whack out a complete set of, say four settings, and one service setting, in one days work without any problem. More if you are a fast worker. I have done a set of mats plus service mat for 8, in a single sewing session, but I tend to work fast on this kind of project. I generally make the number of place setting, plus a center service setting mat of the same pattern but a little smaller or larger than the settings, depending on the sized table that they will be used on. They are a great gift as as they will be sized correctly, by you, to the intended surface and will be greatly appreciated. One thing to remember is, if they will be used on a round kitchen table they should have round corners so that they will be able to be used close to the edge without anything hanging over the edge of the table. You can use a small plate as a template for marking the rounding of the corners of the place-mats before binding and after stitching in the ditch. It is a fun project that is pretty simple to pull off.

John

Thanks Roberta. That is some thing I had never thought of.

Dee in Oz

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I hadn't even thought of using a 12" block Susan.

I love

difficulty.http://www.quilterscache.com/>

I always keep batting scraps just for this type of thing John....lol Small squares could be visualy interesting with the fabric that I have purchased for this project. I do *not* work as fast as you, but the new dining chairs aren't finished yet any way