Spring is firmly here, and summer is coming fast, so I needed something new for my table. I had a bunch of fat quarters in these bright colours, so I decided to make placemats.
I cut them to the size I wanted, and then made quilt sandwiches and quilted them. I did spiral shapes with different base shapes.
To make rounded corners, I used the edge of a bowl to get the curve.
Rounded corners mean that I didn’t have to worry about mitring the corners of the binding, but I did have to use bias binding, not cut on the straight of grain.
For the binding, I just used packaged bias binding. I had some kicking around in matching colours, and it’s a lot easier than cutting it out. I know it’s not the same quality as cutting my own out of quilting cotton, but it works great for small projects like this.
I opened the binding, and sewed it on the edge on the back of the placemat.
After it was sewing onto the back, I turned to the right side, folded it over and then stitched it down on the front. For a project that will be used and washed a lot, I am not going to bother with hand-sewn binding.
Ta-da! A quick and easy project to brighten my kitchen and practice a new quilting technique. win-win.
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Elizabeth DeCroos
Elizabeth DeCroos is the designer and teacher at Epida Studio. She loves to work in quilting, pojagi and embroidery and teach these techniques to others.
Learn more and get her to speak to your group.