The Blue Placemats

I wanted to give my parents something handmade for Christmas, and blue is always a safe bet with my mother. I had some scraps leftover from this table cloth. Well, actually I cut lots of extra 2 ½” strips for that quilt so that I could make a birthday quilt for grandson as well, and grandbaby’s christening quilt were also made from the same strips. So what does that make these little fabric scraps - leftovers from leftovers from leftovers? Leftovers three times removed? Never-ending fabric strips?

Anyway, I brought the scraps to a guild meeting a while ago, and randomly stitched them into a piece of made fabric jellyroll race style. This piece was cut apart and stitched back together with pieces of a recycled curtain fabric. The colour and look is rather denim-ish, but it is very soft and lovely.

While one side was bleached by the sun, the other side looked brand new and it passed the rip-test. If you are unfamiliar with this test, you grab the fabric with both hands, and pull as hard as you can. If it doesn’t rip, it’s fine to use.

I had just enough pieced fabric for 4 place mats, and they look quite different, which I like.

 

My quilting buddies and I had an interesting discussion about how to balance the made fabric and the top and bottom borders while I was making them. It was very interesting to hear the different point of views. No wonder that there are so many different quilts out there.

Simple straight-ish line quilting using the walking foot; goes with anything.

Maybe I should have quilted them with orange thread; the orange binding basting seams looked quite nice with all that blue.

Pictures taken in a hurry in the evening before my parents' arrival; I even forgot to sign them before wrapping them up. And I who sign Everything. Oh well; they know who made them.

Thanks for stopping by!