quilting

Marimekko placemats

I decided a few days ago that we needed new placemats to help protect our lovely new dining room table. I considered buying some, but I couldn’t find any that I liked that weren’t hideously expensive. (The cheapest Marimekko one is $36!) However, I do still have plenty of fabric left over from making the sofa cushions. Why not make my own?

I started by prototyping different shapes. I wanted something organic and asymmetrical, so I used some cardboard to try out a few different options. (I put a plate on top for sizing.)

The first was deemed by the Snook “too egg-like.” (I agreed.) So I tried a few rounded triangles and ended up with option #3.

I decided I wanted the placemats to be reversible, so I found a suitable backing fabric from my stash. I used my template to cut out 6 red front pieces, 6 black back pieces (with the template reversed!), and 6 pieces of thin cotton quilt batting (left over from making Baby Taos’s quilt).

Here are the pieces all set for sewing. The backing fabric is called “Psycat” by Rhynie Cawood, handprinted by Sydney’s Publisher Textiles. I picked up a remnant many years ago and I love how it looks like a Rorschach test.

To assemble, I laid down a red piece face up, then a black piece face down, and then the batting. I pinned them all together.

I sewed them together with a 1/4″ seam allowance, leaving a couple inches at the bottom open so I could turn them out.

Then I trimmed down the quilt batting to avoid the edges being too thick. I also clipped the curves, which basically meant going around the whole thing since it was all curves.

Then I used the opening to turn each placemat right-side out.

I spent some time making sure all the seams were fully pushed out, and I gave each placemat a good ironing. You can see there the opening at the bottom where I turned it out.

I folded in the seam allowances at the opening and hit that with the steam iron. Then I top-stitched all the way around each placemat at 1/8″, both for decoration and to close off the opening.

Pretty quickly I had a completed stack of six placemats!

Now it was time to decide on the quilting. I decided that the best options were either a spiral or a grid, so I mocked up a rough idea and sent it to a few friends for thoughts. Everyone voted for spiral.

I set up the walking foot for my sewing machine, as well as the “quilting attachment” – an adjustable metal bar that sticks out that you can use to sew parallel lines. I used it to ensure the first few spirals were roughly 1″ apart.

Once I got to the middle, I was basically free-handing it and just turning the placemat around and around. I LOVE how it turned out! It was really fun too. I blasted through the remaining placemats to finish the project off.

I’ve got a can of Scotchguard around here somewhere so I’ll probably hit them with that to make them a bit more stain-resistant. Don’t they look great on the table?

Peer Gynt Quilts

If you like classical music, patchwork quilting, or in-depth explanations of creative design process, you will absolutely love this blog series about 4 Peer Gynt-inspired quilts. The artist Deborah Pickett was inspired by this painting based on Ravel’s Boléro. Doesn’t that just make you want to make some art?

A Quilt for Baby Taos

My dear friends Josh and Jamie welcomed their new baby son Taos this year, and I decided that I wanted to make him a little quilt. I’ve had this Moda Fabrics “Mixed Bag” Brushed Cotton charm pack in my stash for a long time, and I realised it would be perfect for a little one. (A charm pack is a set of precut 5”x5” fabric squares, all from the same fabric line so they coordinate.) I started googling to get inspiration and spotted this Building Blocks pattern. I realised that I didn’t even need the pattern; I could just design my own using the same idea.

I settled on a design of 4 columns of 10 blocks each against a white background. I played with a few different layouts on my dining room table and got Rodd to give his opinion. I decided to go with the one on the left here, which was organised vertically by colour.

Possible quilt layout - organised by colour

Piecing the quilt top was very quick! I used a plain white cotton for the background, which contrasted nicely with the brushed texture of the blocks. I sewed it together in horizontal rows, making sure each alternating row was offset by using a half block at the beginning or end.

Once I had all the rows done, I simply joined them all together. Charm packs certainly made the process go faster. I had the whole thing put together in less than a day!

The back side of the quilt was more challenging. I thought it would be fun to use another fabric from the line, but it’s so old that I could find very little of it available online. I finally found one of the zigzag prints at the Remnant Warehouse; it’s not brushed but it’s fine. I still had 2 squares left over from the charm pack so I decided to break it up. I inserted a row of white along with the two squares and a plain one with some embroidery. This meant I got to do some playing around with the fancy computerised features of my machine…

It was a lot of fun, even if the final version still came out a little crooked. I figure that gives it charm. 🙂

For the quilting, I sandwiched the front and back with a thin cotton wadding. (It’s too warm in Sydney for anything else.) I decided on long vertical lines but I deliberately made them a bit wonky and wandering. I thought that tied in nicely to the “wobbly blocks” theme I had going on. Then I used more of the backing fabric for the binding around the edge. I had fun doing the final slip-stitching by hand up at the Snook homestead in front of the fire.

Here’s the final quilt front:

And the back (I put a little “handmade” label on as well):

We met up with Josh and Taos in November and I got to give them the quilt. I told Josh my Mom’s standard Quilt Gift Rule: it comes with lifetime repairs, but only if you actually use it! Josh later sent me a photo showing baby Taos having a play on his new blanket. ❤️