Placemats

My sister, Anita, made the pretty basket

I'm not sure this project really deserves a ton of pictures but since blogging is paid for on a flat rate basis, why not post them all? 

I have been planning to make placemats for our table for some time and had even bought some different fabric for the project. I ended up using most of that pile for other things and finally fashioned some placemats out of a charm pack of Mama Said Sew, mixing in a few other fabrics from my stash.  The designs are pretty traditional - 16 patch, 9 patch and wonky stars.

I did some zig zag machine quilting to hold the layers together and then sewed on the binding before adding some utility hand stitching. I used #8 red perle cotton for the hand work, which doesn't show up all that well on most of the mats. Hmm, not quite how I envisioned it, but I couldn't see any better plan so I powered through and finished. They look just fine on the table and will eventually get splattered with wine and spaghetti sauce anyway, so I wasn't going to get too picky.

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