Whimsical Woods Placemats, An Island Batik Challenge

It's the first Island Batik Ambassador challenge of 2021!  This month, we were tasked to make placemats.  I've been wanting some home-made placemats so this was the perfect push to make something we will use every day.  I had such a good time creating this fun set of placemats that I'm calling Whimsical Woods.

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Aurifil, Hobbs, and Schmetz.

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Aurifil, Hobbs, and Schmetz. 

 

Fabric wise, I decided early on that I wasn't done working with the beautiful Lemon Grass collection by Kathy Engle.  I love the blues and greens (and small touches of purples) and I just can't get enough.  This is my fourth project with Lemon Grass!  The first was a Running With Scissors bag, the second was my Carolina Lilies at Dragonfly Pond medallion, and third was another By Annie bag, Take a Stand.

In the days leading up to Christmas, accuquilt had some pretty good deals. On one of those days, I splurged and bought myself a few dies, including their new gnome that I had been drooling over since it was released.  I also bought their northwoods medley die, which includes a tree, a bear, and a moose.  

For the placemats, I thought it would be nice to surround an applique center with 3 1/2" squares from Lemon Grass in a random fashion.  I already owned the 3 1/2" square die, so I was able to cut those with the accuquilt, too.  The applique shapes were too tall for my original plan of placemats that measured 12" x 18", so these are 15" x 18".  The bigger space in the center gave me lots of room to create scenes with the applique pieces.

I decided to make each center a little different.  By using the same fabrics in the borders, I thought they would still feel like a cohesive set.  I also opted to include trees in each applique scene for a little more continuity of design.  

While most of the fabrics in the Whimsical Woods scenes are also from the Lemon Grass collection, I did use a few scraps of other Island Batik fabrics.  The background is Island Batik's gray solid.  I used Schmetz super nonstick needles to do a satin stitch around each applique shape.  The nonstick needles are fabulous for use with fusible web; I had no problems with my needle getting sticky or gummy from the adhesive.  

I used a wide variety of Auriful thread colors to do the satin stitching.  I kept Aurifil 6732, Earl Gray, in my bobbin and only changed out the top thread.  I also used Earl Gray for the quilting, which I kept to straight lines just inside the edges of the pieced squares.  All threads were 50 weight.

I had a 2-yard cut of a dark blue background with white trees from the Glacier View collection last year.  It was the perfect backing, and I had the perfect amount.  I originally planned 6 placemats but I got carried away and made 8.  I was just having so much fun with the gnomes, trees, moose, and bears!

The batting is Hobbs leftover from various other projects.  Most of them have the Hobbs black 80/20 batting.  I usually use the black batting with a black background, but it worked great with the gray, too, and the bright colors stay so bright and crisp.

 

Typically I enjoy hand binding but I didn't think that would work for this project, so I machine stitched the binding.  I'm happy with the results.

I really enjoy seeing these on my table.  I haven't washed them yet but I suspect they will get washed a lot.  Will they get messy?  Sure.  But I knew that as I made them and I'm okay with that.  I can have lunch with gnomes!

 

 

Special thanks my mother-in-law for allowing me to use her table for photos.  She has a much nicer dining table and dining room set-up than I do!  Far less clutter!

This was such a fun start to the 2021 Island Ambassador year!  I am so excited to show you a year's worth of beautiful Island Batik fabrics.  Be sure to check out all of the Ambassadors; you can find us all here.  And our February blog hop starts Monday--it will showcase all the newest Island Batik collections coming to stores soon.