The Magic of Quilting: Getting Caught Up- Echoes Placemats and Bows and Boughs Mats

Lots of quilting and sewing and (even knitting) has been going on in the last few months, but not much blogging. :)

Echoes Table Runners

I loved this pattern in the magazine (Quilter's World- May 2016) and decided to make one as a wedding gift last summer. Then I made 2 more, one to keep and one more as a gift. (The one on the right has only a thin inner layer of webbing material. It was meant for my cousin in Germany. There they don't usually use batting on their table toppers.

After finishing 3 table runners to take with me to Germany as hostess gifts (2 Lantern toppers and one Echo topper), I had lots of echo blocks left. In November (2016) I worked on making myself a set of 6 placemats.
They were sandwiched together which eliminated the need for edge binding.
Seen below:

Some of the combinations work better than others, but the actual placemats look much nicer and than the photo. I loved the uniqueness of this design. There was no use of rulers and cutting wheels for these mats. They were all made from tracing 2 different template pieces on different bali fabrics, then mixing and matching to get the circular pattern.

pinning curves to sew. Start with a pin at each and and one in the centre.

Then add more pins in between so that the edges on both pieces of fabric always meet.

The quilting was pretty simple. I started sewing with a simple walking foot at the circle ( produced by the 4 wedges) and I sewed concentric circles about a quarter inch apart smaller and smaller and smaller towards the centre. Then I free motion machine stitched the outer part in a simple meander style. each Echo place mat measures 14" X 16" (inches).

I was happy with the outcome and was thrilled to start using them at the table.

Bows and Boughs Christmas Placemats

I was pretty "done" with tracing and sewing curves by then so I decided that I would work on some straight edges and finish up the 'Bows and Boughs" Christmas placemats that I had started last year (to match the table runner that I finished almost a year ago. Never too late to work on a UFO, right?

I realized that the Christmas placemat tops were a bit too long and narrow, so I chopped off a half inch from each side and added a red border on top and bottom (to add to the width) and a narrow white /gold star border around the 4 sides. I quilted them mainly with ditch quilting except the spruce trees which I echo quilted towards the centre. (hard to see from the photos.)

The completed Bows and Boughs mats are 14 inches wide by 18 inches long. I completed them on January first (in time to use for Ukrainian Christmas, LOL! ) :)

Sometimes you get lucky! That small 3 inch piece of dark green binding on the ruler is all that I have left of that fabric after putting the edge binding on all 6 placemats! :D

In between these 2 sets of mats, I worked on another UFO, my Judy Niemeyer paper pieced quilt top, Steppingstones pattern. What a HUGE amount of work that was! That's another story coming up soon. Happy quilting!