'Scrappy' place Mats

I hate to waste anything so I was thrilled to find a book of patterns for using up left over fabric scraps. I made the little baby quilt top (see last post) from left overs and was so pleased with how it turned out! Now I  have also made a set of 6 place mats as a Christmas gift for my mother.

They were all made totally from scraps and left over fabric.   I sewed together pieces of the fabric every which way and then cut  24 rectangles out of it  6 1/2 x 4 1/2" inches in size.  I used 4 of them for each place mat. The dark green sashing separating them is 1" inch wide (the strips were cut 1 1/2 " wide to include seam allowances...) The outer sashing is 2 inches wide.  Each completed place mat is 17 1/4 " X 13 1/4". 

The back is chocolate brown, the same fabric as the block centres on T& J's Black and white Christmas quilt (which still needs to be quilted.)  I did buy extra brown fabric though, knowing I would use it elsewhere, so I guess I cheated a little...

I have lots of other left over fabric scraps so I might make another set of place mats to keep after Christmas... It is so much faster to make the mock edging using the back fabric, though, than making all the separate strips! I made all of these edge strips from the same leftover fabric as the inner rectangles and it took a long time to sew them together!  But I like how they turned out.  And isn't that really the main point???