A Plethora of Placemats

There are two different local quilt guilds that I belong to, and both of them collect placemats for donation to Meals on Wheels as community service projects. We had a guild sewing day last week to work on placemats together, and I've managed to get quite a few done at home over the past month too.

One member shared a tutorial and pattern from Shabby Fabrics for making Self-Binding Placemats, and I had to give it a try. They were quick to make, but they don't have any batting in them, which seems less useful to me.

I made multiple sets of quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) placemats, using strips of varying sizes. These are the type of placemats we made at the group sewing day. I have a pair in brown and blue with the addition of a pieced section.

Here are three more QAYG, these made from my favorite colors of teal and turquoise.

The next four feature berry print fabrics left over from making fabric napkins a few years ago.

I had a Christmasy border-stripe fabric that was planned to become a couple of tablerunners for the guild's holiday craft market, but we decided not to participate in the market this year. The border stripe worked nicely for a set of six placemats.

The last set of six placemats began as blocks from the National Quilt Museum's 2023 block of the month. I made a few of the 12" x 24" blocks, but there were other block designs that I didn't want to make. I divided each finished block in half and added side borders to turn them into placemats.

As a point of comparison, here are the blocks from that BOM , including one that hasn't yet been used in a placemat.

There are several things that I enjoy about making placemats. It's fun to have a small project that doesn't take months to complete, and I like the chance to play with different design ideas. They are also a great way to burn through some of my stash. I ended up with 23 finished placemats and used a total of 9.25 yards in the process. Our deadline for turning in placemats is the guild meeting on November 20th, and I hope to make even more before then.

2025 STASH TOTALS

Used last week:                9.25 yards

Used year to date:         63.625 yards

Added last week:                 0.0 yards

Added year to date:        74.375 yards

Net added in 2025:       10.75 yards

Kate's 15 Minutes to Stitch Challenge at Life in Pieces has us tracking how many days each week we get in at least 15 minutes of quilting time. As you would probably guess, I definitely spent more than 15 minute per day on quilting last week, although some of those placemats were made earlier in October.

15 Minute Challenge for 2025

10/26 - 11/1             7 of 7 days

2025 Total         301 of 305 days

Success rate               98.7 %   

Check out more stash reports at quiltpaintcreate and join the 15 Minutes to Stitch Challenge at Life in Pieces. Thanks so much to Donna and Kate for continuing to host these link-ups. I'm also linking up with Oh Scrap! at Quilting is more fun than Housework.

Happy quilting everyone!

Julie in GA