Scrappy (Ugly) Placemats are Finished

I finished quilting the last two placemats then started in on sewing on the binding. I got to practice doing the tricky joining of the two ends of binding and sewing them on a diagonal. The first time I tried this successfully was at our class last week but our teacher set it up for me. With the placemat bindings, I got to do it myself and more or less internalize the process. 

I sewed the binding on the wrong side of one of the placemats. I didn't discover it until I was half done sewing down the folded binding on the other side. I wondered why there was black thread on the checkerboard side. D'oh! I was supposed to sew the binding onto the dark side. Then after folding it over to the lighter side, sew the binding down with the dark thread showing on the dark side. 

After ripping all those seams out, there were lots of little bits of thread so I stuck a strip of masking tape along the area I ripped out and all the little threads stuck to it. Yay! I saved myself a lot of tedious picking.

Once I got the second placemat done, I whizzed through the other two. Skip had already had his lunch using the placemat I finished last night.

After a final pressing, here they are.

It was a pretty fun project and I got to hone some more quilting skills.

One thing that was very helpful was the batting I used. Neither Fabricland nor the Ultimate Sewing Centre had fusible polyester batting so I bought a large piece of cotton batting, fusible on both sides. Had it only been fusible on one side I could have used basting spray on the other but having both sides fusible made it a lot easier. 

I'm going to take a break from making placemats. However this project would lend itself nicely to using fat quarters or jelly rolls in coordinating colours and a complimentary fabric for the solid back.

I may have found a pattern to stitch for the lid of my embroidery hoop box. It's a winter pattern meant for stitching white stars and crosses (snowflakes don't have 8 points) on a darker/natural-coloured fabric. It's Winter from digital magazine, The Gift of Stitching, Issue #16, May 2007. 

I drew a circle on the pattern on the areas to be stitched, omitting the letters. The 36ct fabric should fit the lid exactly.

I'm using my favourite DMC 115 a variegated garnet/red thread.

About The Gift of Stitching Magazine... it was a digital stitchery magazine which ceased publication in 2012 because of Internet piracy. All 72 issues or individual back issues are available for download here. I return to this treasure trove of patterns frequently and highly recommend the investment of about $30USD or $40CAD for over 2000 pages of stitcherly goodness.