More Placemats!

I took a quick little trip out of town Monday and Tuesday but I got these new placemats mostly done before I left town and finished them up last night. That's one more gift set for the family beach trip.

This set started with these 4 overdyed napkins from my big bin of overdyed napkins. I pulled these out and challenged myself to make a set of placemats that would work with them.
​

When I did my big sun printing extravaganza last summer (read about it here and here), I created quite the stockpile of sun prints and I think I've only used one so far! I started my search for a focus fabric there and found two fat quarters of this big leaf print. That was going to be just enough for 4 placemats. The side pieces are from an overdyed commercial black and white fabric. I had enough of it to use for the back too. That fabric had been in my stash a very long time and I'm glad it hung around just for this project. 
​

I started quilting in the edge borders with this overlapping wavy line and I intended to use it over the whole placemat. But once I saw it, I didn't like it. I was not going to take it out so I did this quilting in all of the edges. You can barely see it anyway.
​

I thought a grid might be better on the leaf print and I was right. I think it took a little over an hour to quilt all 4 of them. 

It's nice to have a focus fabric like this because there's no need for doing a lot of piecing. Let the focus fabric shine and make the rest simple. 

Next I'll make a set specifically for Mom. She said she would prefer 4 different placemats, rather than a set of 4. That will be a great place to use some of the special sun print fabrics that I have. Most are one-of-a-kind so there will be just enough for one placemat. 

I'll start those and will get one of Mom's quilts loaded and start quilting tomorrow.