Placemats

I have mentioned before that a quilt was going to Habitat, that is the charity of choice for the Decatur Quilt Lovers Guild. This is a small group of ladies but with big hearts. We now have more quilts ready than Habitat has homes so we went looking for another project to give. We are going to make placemats for each recipient of Meals on Wheels in Morgan County. That number is 325, which is pretty ambitious for a group of about 22, but I have no doubt it is a goal we can accomplish. February is their primary fund raising month so we plan to have them ready to present at that time. We are also going to ask the ladies at Somerville Stitch Day if they would like to help so I have been working on a few examples to show as an infomercial on Saturday.

Since binding would probably be the most time consuming part this is one that I pieced and then birthed and quilted last. This eliminates the binding.

I have a box of strips so I did this one as a quilt as you go and then sewed the binding from the back and stitched it down on the front by machine. This was a big time saver.

Here is an example where I was short of long enough strips so I pieced the strips before adding to the quilt as you go method. I think it adds interest. Bound this on on the machine too.

When I went to sew the binding on this one, out of habit I sewed it to the front so I hand stitched it down. It only took me about 35 minutes to whip it down so I plan to do a few more to carry to stitch day since we mainly do hand work.

This one I used varying widths of strips, not sure I like it as well. I like to work on 2 or 3 of these quilt as you go style so that I am not getting up to iron so often. On these I have been aiming for darker more masculine appeal, but we will do a variety. 

This was a 12.5 inch orphan block that I added strips to the side. I have a couple of other test blocks this size that I have not done anything with until now. I think this will be a worthwhile finish for these blocks. I also have some smaller orphan blocks that I plan to put together. I'll load a back on the longarm and then float these placemats on top, quilt then cut apart and bind. I'm even thinking about doing some ovals ones using left over bias binding. Just cut the shapes from a large flora print I have and quilt and bind. We have 4 months to get these done but with a little bit of effort and maybe a couple of sew days we will get them done early. Two or three people working together on the quilt as you go can accomplish a lot fast. I showed Carol how to do these last week and we made 3 in less that 2 hours.

This and some quilting for others is what I will be working on this week, what do you have going?

Linking with-----
Oh, Scrap
Slow Sunday Stitching
Monday Making
Design Wall Monday
Main Crush Monday
Moving it Forward


Happy Stitching,

Teresa