Place mat Progress

Progress has been slow... I have been a busy girl with all my PT exercises and doing some work and sometimes the knee is just a bit to achy for the sewing room.

I must admit that this is not my favorite project and will be happy when it is done! I'm not exactly sure why, I think maybe because it is a challenging project and with all the other 'challenges' in life right now I needed something easier??? Maybe.

I am very happy with how they are turning out. Although, I think they are slightly busy, lots of details to look at. But, maybe that's a good thing for during any awkward dinner conversations you have something good to gaze at! :)

They are a bit time consuming. Each place mat has 18 pieces for the pieced front and took roughly 30 mins each to just piece and at least another 10 to press all the seams correctly to lay flat. Never mind the seemingly endless hours it seemed to take figuring out the darned geometry of all the pieces. My first entire set of diamonds were all cut out too small! All six are together, now they need to be trimmed and sandwiched, then quilted and binded.

2 of the place mats, each of the six are slightly different. These have been pressed but not yet trimmed.

These are the table runner pieces laid out on my ironing board. In the runner I have incorporated some diamonds from the binding fabric and the wine hexagons face away from each other on each side.

I have all the pieces for the runner also laid out and ready to be sewn, now to just do it.

A new project: Placemats and Table runner

My husband asked if I could make a new set of place mats for our dining room. It must have had something to with the fact that currently on the dining table is a set of 3 Halloween place mats that are probably about 15 years old! 

I have plenty of beautiful tablecloths  but for some reason I don't like using a tablecloth for everyday use. I prefer place mats but I only have a couple and somehow they have seemed to dwindle.

Last winter my husband bought me several yards of Robert Kaufman design in a wine print. This fabric along with some new quilting templates that I got for my birthday this year spawned into an idea. I was at first going to just do a simple set of place mats but then I thought that place mats are the perfect size to try out new techniques on. The templates that I bought were for hexagon, diamond and a crazy pattern. For this project I am using the hexagon and diamonds.

Designing the pattern on graph paper was fun and then I got to sewing up a test piece and OH. MY. GOODNESS. Piecing together hexagons and diamonds takes precision and patience! Well at the very least I can say that I tried something new.

playing with some ideas with the diamonds

The hexagons and the new EZ Hexagon template.

Test piece

 I have several other accent fabrics to go with the wine prints. At least I have something to keep me busy!