How long will these stay clean?

6 Jul

For as long as I can remember (which is at least 3 years ago) I’ve wanted to make placemats for my children and would you believe it this weeks project in Patchwork, Please! was placemats.

I didn’t really plan to make them but after wiping my little boys placemat one morning after breakfast decided that now really was the time as once it had looked a bit like this:
placemat

and now the vehicles are almost unidentifiable.

So I pulled out a pile of charms I have from 2 Japanese charm swaps and selected 8 charms that I thought would work for fussy cutting. I also had bought a pair of linen trousers from the charity shop for £2 for the purpose of cutting up for zakka projects.  The trousers weren’t really wide enough to cut a 12″ square from, I managed it for the first one and then on the other 2 pieced two 6.5″ pieces together.

I paper pieced the side panels as my brain couldn’t quite work out cutting the correct shapes out with seam allowances etc, my excuse being that my eldest daughter (Bethan, 8 yrs old) was away from home for the first time on a school residential.

Anyway it came together quickly, I jumped on Lynne’s tip of using a thin strip of fabric (5/8″) instead of ric rac which meant I could get the project finished then and there:

Diamond Patchwork Placemat M

Mathias was quite delighted, this is his empty bowl after dinner tonight, he won’t eat sauce with his pasta which is why it looks so clean!

My daughter Leah (who was not away) quite liked the idea of a placemat but I was unable to pin her down to choose fabrics and I was fairly sure that if I used my initiative I would be wrong.

So on Friday morning before school Bethan (back from 3 days away) asked if I would make her a placemat and duly chose fabrics, spurred on by her sister, Leah realised that she might have the time and patience to choose fabrics now and unsurprisingly surprised me with her choices:

Diamond Patchwork Placemat L

Yes there is a pink fabric in there; yes, that did surprise me but then it does have cake on.

Bethan’s choices were mainly animals and one featuring the Eiffel Tower, both girls are keen to visit Paris one day.

Diamond Patchwork Placemat B

I used Summerville Crosshatch in London Bus red for the backing of the first placemat, Leah asked for the same as her brother despite being told she could choose whatever she wanted from my stash.  Bethan given the same option went for Summersville Fall in London Bus red and I must say I love how this looks.

So Mathias has spilt yogurt on his and it’s been washed already, I finished the girls mats this afternoon and by the end of dinner there wasn’t too much mess to be seen but it might not be a bad idea to have a few spare!

Linking up with the Paper Piecing Party at Kristys:

Paper Piecing Party
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11 Replies to “How long will these stay clean?

  1. Your placemats are adorable!! Your kids have a good eye for fabric 🙂 .i see you are doing And Sew On…next time I am on Flickr I will look for you so I can place your blog with your blocks. I would have to agree with you…paper piecing is easier for my mind to compute also 🙂

  2. Ooo I love them, I must do placemats. I think I will use iron on laminate on them afterwards, easy to keep clean! (Mine are very small and messy) 🙂

  3. I love this! I want to make some too, but my table is round and I need to figure out how to make something pretty like this in the round.

  4. They look great – people keep telling me about scotchguard (which I just thought was for shoes), and it’s magical fabric protecting qualities!!

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