DIY Quilted Placemats

Just before Christmas I was asked to try a new project...making placemats! The same friend who ordered this tote {which I love} asked me to use that same fabric to make her some quilted placemats. She is planning on converting her kitchen to a rooster theme, and I am so excited to see the end result!

I had never made placemats before...but after doing some research and looking at some placemats we had around, I figured out my plan of attack. Really it was quite simple!

I started out by cutting the rectangles of fabric that I needed. I pretty much just guessed on a good size, after looking at the size of some other placemats. I honestly don’t remember for sure what size I ended up with, but it might have been 17x12”?? I have so many measurements written on my white board from things I’ve worked on recently that I don’t remember, haha.

I cut out quilt batting the same size for each placemat. You need two rectangles of fabric and one of batting per placemat.

Iron the fabric good, and pin these layers together. Niiiice and flat.

I used a yard stick and chalk to make a nice straight quilting line across the center of the placemat. I have a little quilting bar on my sewing machine that helps me make the rest of the lines straight, but the first one I do this way.

I love using chalk, it just wears off by itself, normally by the time the finished product is complete.

I make my quilting lines two inches apart, but do whatever you think looks best. I also decided to just make the lines going one direction, instead of criss-crossed lines. I find that the more quilting lines you have, the more chances of things getting wonky and misshapen, and I really wanted to end up with a nice flat rectangle in the end. Haha. (I do the criss-crossed quilting lines on my tote bags, if you need an example of what I mean by that.)

I decided to get a little fancy (ha!) and cut off the corners of the rectangle so it wouldn’t end up being just a normal rectangle. I just used my cutting mat to give me even cuts on all the corners.

See how the cutting mat has a nice 45 degree corner already printed for me?? Its a good thing, because I am horrible at figuring out things like that! I just set the corner of the placemat in that printed corner, and cut!

Note: if you try this, resist the urge to play with the cute pile of corners. {wink!}

Next I just stitched all the way around the edge of the placemat to hold everything in place. These things are starting to look like the real deal!

I made my own binding tape-esque stuff for the edge by cutting even strips of the fabric, then pressing the edges in {so there would be no raw edges} and then pressing that in half. I painstakingly pinned that around the edges and sewed it all together.

Let me tell you, this was the tricky part. I kept having to rip sections out and re-sew them to make sure that both sides of my “tape” were catching evenly in the stitching. I also wasn’t 100% pleased with how some of the corners turned out, but at least I don’t have to look at them every day. {wink!} #horriblethingforaseamstresstosay

I was happy with how they turned out, overall!

So there is one of my newest endeavors! Let me know if you try this out! Have you ever made placemats, or anything else for your kitchen? I'd love to hear about it!

Curtain Tutorial

Curtains are probably my favorite thing to make. Weird, eh? I think its because I never use a pattern, I just measure the window and go. Its fun to think up the style in my head and make it come out my hands!

I am in the progress of making curtains for our new bathrooms. I have one done, and have the other all cut out. Here is a little tutorial on what I did:

Just so you know where I am going with this, here is the style curtain I made:

I just measured how long I wanted the curtain on the outside edges, and how long I wanted the middle to be. Then I cut diagonally between these two points. I left allowance for the top ruffle as well. This is a pretty large window, so had a 2” ruffle on top of the curtain rod. All total, with the bottom hem as well, I had about 6” hem allowance added to the length of the curtain. I cut two of these to make two triangle-shaped pieces for main part of the curtain. I also cut a rectangular piece for the middle that was the same length as the shortest side of the triangle pieces.

When that was cut out, I ironed all my hems. Here I am ironing the top. This is a large hem to make the place for the rod to go through and the 2” ruffle on top. (There is a real name for that place the rod goes through, but it isn’t coming to me right now!)

After they were all ironed, I used the curtain like a pattern to know how big to cut the lining. Ingenious, aren’t I?? Hey, whatever works! I wanted the lining to lay flat with the edges hidden by the hems of the curtains.

Next step was to serge all the edges of the curtain. This is so nice, so I don’t have to do the whole double iron-foldy thing on all the hems!

Then I just laid my lining in, and sewed all the edges! I started with the sides, then the bottom, and finally the top edge, making the curtain rod-thingy and the ruffle on top. (This is a very technical description, isn’t it?)

And viola! That was all there was too it!

Heres a picture with our $1 shower curtain. Doesn’t it all match so well!

When I get the other bathroom’s curtain done, I’ll show you a picture of that as well. I am absolutely hearting the fabric we got for that one!!

Hymnal

Just to let you all know, my page-ironing worked very well! It did not turn out "like-new," but it is a whole lot better, and easier to turn pages. It did take a long time, the hymnal has nearly 500 songs, but it was worth it! Hope my random craziness will help someone else!!

I'm wacky, I know

I did something last night that I have never done before. I ironed the pages of a hymnal!

Let me explain. No, I’m not completely losing it, I had a purpose. :) The hymnal for the piano here at church is one of those 3-ring deals. I use the word “deal” loosely because sometimes they are more trouble than they are worth! That was getting to be the case with this one. All of the pages were bent and many have holes that are ripped out. It’s a bit disheartening to open the hymnal, trying to play for congregational singing, and have half the pages fall into your lap.

So I decided to try to fix some of them. Many had the corners folded over on the side that the holes for the rings are. This was making the book thicker than it should be, which in turn was making it hard to shut. If the book wasn’t shut carefully, things would get even worse. So I reasoned, if I can flatten out those corners, maybe the whole thing will lay flat again.

So I brought the book home and tried it out. I set the iron on the lowest setting and turned the steam off. I took out the first page and put a cloth over it to see how it would work. I did a couple pages that way, but found that the cloth wasn’t really letting the heat get through, and therefore wasn’t really doing much. So I licked my finger and felt the iron. I decided it was cool enough to just iron directly on the page. So that is what I did. I got over half the book done! It is kind of a slow process, but I think it is working. I’m excited to get them all done and see how it looks!

Some of the pages are in such bad disrepair that I am going to have to pick up some reinforcers for the holes. I don’t like to do that, because it makes the book thicker than it should be and can be even more trouble than its worth, but some are so bad that I will have to.

Hopefully I will finish ironing the pages tonight, and pick up the reinforcers tomorrow. I will let you know how it turns out!