Wednesday, December 14, 2022

SELF-BINDING PLACEMATS

Yesterday, I saw a friend's Facebook post with a link to a video for making Self-Binding Placemats. In just a few quick minutes I saw how brilliant this would be for a simple finish to a simple gift.

UPDATE: Here are all 9 made in a few hours: 

Today I am making 9 of these placemats for a party next Saturday. Once I pulled out the Christmas fabrics and cut all the pieces, I was ready to go:

That is all the fabrics needed, top and bottom, for a dozen placemats.

The instructions are a FREE download from Shabby Fabrics. You give them your email, they provide the free pattern download. Find it here: 

Link to VIDEO and FREE DOWNLOAD

While on my walk yesterday, thinking about how I wanted to make placemats now, I came up with the idea to make 8 right away. Then I thought it would be fun to make HAPPY BIRTHDAY placemats too, for kids. I will be on the lookout for Happy Birthday fabric and will make a stack of them to have on hand. All I would have to do is give one to a family before the child's first birthday. It could be used for all  members of the family on each person's birthday. You would only need ONE per family unless there happened to be multiples with the same birthday.

This simple project would be good for housewarming gifts. Or other seasonal decorating. Lots of ideas floating around.

If you wanted quilted placemats, it would be easy to add thin batting to the bottom of the fabric "sandwich" before you start sewing. Cut the batting the same size as the top. It would require some simple grid quilting when the placemat was finished to keep the batting flat, but that is an easy, extra step.

These make up very quickly. I made the first two to be sure I understood the process, then will go into "production mode" to get the rest done fast. The steps are repetitive so it is much faster to make more than one at a time. 

And this self-binding technique lends itself to small quilts too. Easy peasy.

So glad my friend Darlene C turned me on to this video. I  have saved it to my Pinterest boards too, under Mug Rugs/ATC's/Etc. 

Let's quilt.

Barbara

1 comment:

  1. That Shabby presenter/owner? was a commercial pilot before she was a shop owner......

    ReplyDelete