Spiral Placemats

Linking with Needlework Tuesday

Sewing gifts for Christmas and birthdays in lieu of purchasing them is more meaningful, uses stash and saves buying into the madness of retail Christmas!
Recently I saw the pattern below from "Designs To Share With You"

 Immediately thought of a couple of fabrics and a recipient came to mind.

I decided to show a bit of the process because at first I found the instructions a little confusing! Really they are fast and easy but the directions about the ruler were not at first clear to me [maybe the blonde thing? LOL!] The picture above shows what the pattern actually means as to how to make the cuts but it becomes crystal clear once you "get it" and as long as you pay attention and use the coordinate fabric for the first side then alternate with the feature fabric you will not have a problem.

 I chose to chain sew, it was faster to sew eight times [eight placemats] then trim eight triangles than to sew, trim sew trim etc. and I did the trimming on the mat beside my machine to save time and keep my wounded foot up! My chairs are on rollers so I can easily slide side to side to be in the best position for using the rotary cutter, less chance of injury.

Ta da!  I am so happy with these, this organic looking fabric has been waiting for just the right project and the Hoffman I chose to coordinate looks great with it. By the way, I found that the 18" squares for batting and backing seemed over generous I do hate waste, I found 16" adequate.

Using Bottom Line matching thread from Superior I top stitched around the very edge and around the center octagon only I think that will be adequate to keep it stable during laundering.

Then this great batik seemed to lend itself to another set and I love how they turned out.

Solid black backing since I had no appropriate red.

What to do then with all those triangles I removed? I used some of them for "leaders and enders" during the chain sewing.

While I was at it I sewed up a couple of my selvedge pot holders for a hostess gift 

and made three more of these pumpkins, also a hostess gift.

Last Saturday my  Fiber Artists MeetUp group got together and I worked on the Crystal Clear quilt kit, just one more section, well half a section, I still need to make the mirror image .

Obviously this quilt will be a long term project!