Reversible Place mats - Tutorial

Several years ago, Fabric land was clearing out this wonderful quilters' cotton fabric at buy one metre for a dollar and get five metres free.  Apparently skulls and roses are not that popular for quilting.  One of my goals in 2013 is to use up supplies from the stash instead buying more.  These place mats are made from 100% cotton, denim cotton, Superior cotton thread, Warm and Natural Cotton batting.

This fabric was washed, dried and ironed before making the quilt sandwich. 

I made this oval placemats about 30 years ago.  Back then I bought quilted fabric and bias tape, cut the ovals out, attached the bias tape and they were done.

This is a bought blue cotton place mat that shrunk in the laundry.  ~sigh  For this project I decided to use a rectangle rather than oval shape.

The skull and roses print was supposedly 45" wide and the demin 60'.  The batting was 45" by 60" so I cut the fabric to fit the batting.  The bottom of the quilt sandwich was pulled taut to the table, then held in place with carpenter's plastic clamps.

Next the batting laid out smooth and flat.

Followed by the denim top side.

This quilt sandwich was pin basted.

I choose the Superior 100% cotton cream coloured thread.

It was quilted on my Pfaff Creative 2, feed dogs down, stitch length set to zero using the modified dynamic quilting foot.

 The quilting design is jesters' hats.

I love, love these Schmetz Gold titanium needles.  It is a small needle 75/11 but super strong. I made 11 embroidery snowflakes (minimum 17,000 stitches for the little snowflakes and 25,000 for the big ones) with this needle before the place mat project and the needle is still terrific.

 

The Superior cotton thread was really messy to use, it kept building up fuzz in the bobbin area and around the needle.  I cleaned out the bobbin casing and area every time the bobbin ran out.  Plus the low bobbin sensor quit working.

Cut to 12' by 18"

 

 

 

Oh goody, more ironing to make the binding.

 

 These strips are 2.25" wide.  I use Dara's tutorial to make binding.

 Attaching the binding.

Both sides of the binding were machine stitched.  I used a three step zig zag stitch to attach the binding to the denim side.

 

Yippee! The first place mat is finished.

Dear Readers, which side do you like better?

The pottery cup has Stash Blueberry Superfruit caffeine free herbal tea in it.  The cup was made by a local potter who sells his pottery in an old church he converted to a pottery shop on route to Clear Lake.

 

 I prefer the denim side because the jesters' hats are so visible.

These dishes have gone through the dishwasher so many times, the pattern is fading.  I have nicer dishes but I wanted to show off the place mat not the dishes.  The corelle dishes were put out to demo the size of the place mat.

One place mat finished, eight more and two pot holders left on this project.  These place mats are a gift for Shannon.  I do hope she likes them.  Gosh it is so good to be back to sewing again.