14 Placemats and a Table Runner...My first commissioned Piece is finished!!!

14 Place mats and a Table runner… My first commissioned Piece is finished!!

Yeah, I can hear you all laughing at me, as I’ve taken my sweet time making this happen in between work, looking after my little guy… and all of the rest. Well I’ve done it! My first completed commissioned pieces and they look great! But don’t you all just line up yet with different things for me to do for you! (I still have far too many UFO’s haunting my spare room and cupboards!)



It all started when my aunt came over for a cup of morning tea when I first moved back to town. She loved that I had quilted myself washable place mats. (As, let’s face it, plastic ones fade, or just aren’t that nice after a while). So with the scraps of wadding from making quilts, I made myself some place mats and she saw them, loved the idea and then commissioned me to make 14 for her and a Table runner. The idea being that she can have many fabulous family dinners, or just use and wash as she needs!

My aunt selected all of the fabric, so all I had to do was cut it up as needed, and of course I cut up too much which led me to create a mini tablecloth for her. (See blog post from December 2012). Which she sees as an added bonus (thankfully), and not a severe oversight on my part.

 

  To make these place mats I’ve just cut up fabric to make braids as if I were making a French Braid Quilt. This has saved a great deal of fabric and cutting in the long run. Then I’ve cut up the Braids as needed to make the centre of the place mats and the table runner.

 

The table runner was a bit scary for me to attempt. I had the length of braid needed, but was worried about how to join the edges in the fashion that my aunt wished.  I worked it out and then felt silly for not being able to do it sooner.

The binding for these is an apricot linen type material which was difficult to sew.  After doing this project I will not attempt to quilt any fabric that is not cotton. There were cottons, batiks, upholstery fabric, poly cottons and linens used in this project.

I used bamboo batting or wadding for this project. I purchased a double bed sized bagged amount of bamboo wadding (from Spotlight) and managed to use it all, by carefully cutting as needed.

To quilt I’ve used Ranstant and Gutermann threads. As I’m doing more and more, I’m binding by using the Spray. I do wait a few days so that my needle on my machine doesn’t gum up. And I find that its next to useless to baste spray anything when it’s raining, ultra hot (so if one’s breaking a sweat) or  if it’s constantly overcast, but it might or might not rain….basically any weather that we’ve had in the last six months!