How to Quilt Multiple Placemats, and UFO Report

Here is a little tutorial on how to get a zillion placemats done for Meals on Wheels.

Start with a customer who gives you a large bag of remnants - mostly man-stuff like fishing & camping fabrics.

Add another customer who gives you a box of started scrappy quilt blocks.

Take those two items to your quilt guild, and guilt the members into taking some of that stuff home to make wee placemat tops that measure somewhere in the vicinity of 12-ish inches by 18-ish inches.  While they are groaning and rolling their eyes at you, remind them that they DO NOT NEED TO QUILT THEM.  If they are still giving you a hard time, let your eyes get a little watery as though you might be starting to cry, and tell them about how your mom used to get little gifts from Meals on Wheels and it really cheered her up.  That should work.

When they bring them back to you the next month, take 'em all  home and try to find one backing fabric that will look ok with ALL of the wee tops.  This is definitely a challenge!  Here, you can see that I found a nice neutral in my stash.

Pin those puppies on to a very large hunk of backing fabric which has been matched up with a very large hunk of batting.  Allow three inches of space all around each placemat.  And use a thinner batt - pouffy stuff tends to tip over wine glasses.  Not that seniors drink wine, of course.  :-)

Baste around the edges of each placemat.

Quilt them.  Stay INSIDE each placemat with the stitching - you'll see why in a second.

Cut them apart, leaving a generous one inch of backing all the way around.  Trim off the batting at the edge of the wee top. This way, you can simply turn the backing over to the top, folding over twice, and top stitch in place for binding. 

I have a very fancy name for this binding, calling it "Back To Front Self Binding".  Ahem.

UFO CHALLENGE UPDATE

Ta da...  Here is the Blooming 9-Patch all done.  Binding finished and everything.  Even labelled.  Now I'm waiting for Margaret to pull the number for months March & April.  I am going on a retreat this weekend so maybe I could do a little work on the next one.

Have I shown you my cutie-patootie lately?