Placemats (Christmas Present #1)

When I was visiting my dad back in February, his placemats had clearly seen better days.  I told him so, and asked if I made him new ones, would he throw out the old ones?  He agreed.  I plan to make 8-10 of these, but was only able to get 4 made for Christmas because they took more scraps than I expected. So this is the first installment, and he'll get 4 more next year.  Hopefully this is enough to warrant getting rid of the old & gross ones!

I save scraps if I can get at least a 2" square out of them.  I've been planning for a while to make something with blue, green, brown, and gray Kona scraps.  I thought those would be perfect for this placemet project.  I went throgh the Kona bin and pulled out blue, green, brown, and grey scraps.  Any shade, no matter how light or dark.  I didn't like how the gray looked, so I took those out.  I got out the Accuquilt and my 2" square die and just cut as many squares as I could, and then took them to the sewing machine.  I paired them together randomly. 

It took 80 squares to make a size I was happy with!  Hence starting with just the four for now.  I quilted on the diagonal but only once; with squares these small I thought cross-hatch would be to much.  I used black for the binding, mostly because I know I'll be able to match it even if the next four are made a year from now.

Ready for the list of Kona colors included?  It's a long one!  And is in the order I pulled them out of the bin and identified them, so no particular order:  Ice Frappe, Cabbage, Willow, Lagoon, Chestnut, Blueberry, Robin Egg, Marine, Candy Green, Cloud, Emerald, Waterfall, Asparagus, Malibu, Pond, Zucchini, Celery, Blueprint, Clover, Niagara, Lime, Sage, Cadet, Stone, Seafoam, Chocolate, Sprout, Sandy, Parakeet, Leprechaun, Candy Blue, Sable. 

I'm really pleased with how they turned out and hope he likes them.  These are machine washable so hopefully won't get as gross as the current set.  Now I need to cut a bunch more squares so I can make the second set!



This was goal #2 on my Q4 list of goals for the Finish Along.