Quilted Table mats for practice pieces

Hi to you all,
I have been rather busy in the last few weeks with a number of client quilts as well as these.

For ever so long I have been wanting to replace the ugly cork mats we use at the dinner table. I needed to either buy or make 16 new table mats, so this is what I did.
 I took two large pieces of  fabric and one strip of polyester batting and quilted then on my long
arm as a whole cloth quilt. The thread I choose to use was Superior So Fine 401 which  blends beautifully.
Then I sub cut them to size,  created a pocket on the back for the cork mats to slide into and then bound them in matching binding.

The process took about two hours on the long arm and then time during the day to cut and sew and then to bind them in front of the television in the evenings. Two of the table mats I have treated differently as I have a large drawer of crochet table mats and cloths from both my mother and grandmothers  so I have attached two of small cloths by hand.

So far I completed 8 with another 8 to go. Six of the table mats are in fabric that I have hand dyed in a soft turquoise aqua color and these have been stitched in a pale soft blue thread. Photographs for these will follow when they are complete. I have totally loved doing these and it will be great to remove the cork mat and be able to wash them when necessary. In the future I think I am going to make some red ones using some hand dyed red fabric but that will not be for a while as I would like to experiment with more batik dying techniques and think I will need at least two metres of fabric dyed ready to go.
Thanks for dropping by

A finish for a Client

Hi to everyone,
This is the last finish for this week, this quilt was made by a ten year old girl and is fantastic, it is beautiful sewn and constructed. It was quite hard to decide what to do as the fabrics were quite busy but once we had chosen the thread colours I was off. Three threads were used all variegated,  one was a thread by Superior Threads called Lava, which was a delight to use and the others were two threads by Signature Threads in an aqua and the other a limey green. I decided to treat areas of the quilt differently and used the lime and aqua threads to highlight the fabrics in those colours with the thread. This quilt took many changes of thread to finish and as the threads were different weights the quilting machine seemed to need adjusting every thread change, but was well worth the effect, and I love how certain areas pop out.
Thanks for dropping by Jeannette