I bought a panel with four "Botanica" placemats by Michel Design Works for Northcott and a "jelly-roll" of 42-inch by 2.5-inch strips of all the fabrics in the "Botanica" line so that I could use the strips to make a quilt-as-you-go backing for the "Botanica" placemat panels.
I needed a fifth placemat, so I used scraps of the ginko leaf pattern from Michael D'Amore's "Daily Zen" line for Benartex to make the backing for the fifth placemat. I had to match the pattern to get a piece big enough for the back. Nice job, huh?
Quilt-as-you-go is an easy technique for making placemats since the quilting is done along with the piecing.
Each placemat on the "Botanica" panel is 21 x 14-inches, so for each placemat I cut a piece of quilt batting in that size, and spray basted one placemat from the "Botanica" panel to one side of the batting with Spray-n-Bond Basting Adhesive.
I chose the fabric strips from my "jelly-roll" that I wanted to use for my quilt-as-you-go side.
To make a napkin pocket: for each mat, I cut two pieces of the "Daily Zen" ginko fabric 5.5-inches wide and 15-inches long. I trimmed one of each pair of wide strips to 12.5-inches and folded it in half with wrong sides together, and sandwiched a 5x6-inch piece of iron-on interfacing between the two sides. I basted this folded piece to the bottom of the longer wide-piece with the folded edge in the middle of the strip to make a pocket.
Then I made a diagram of my layout including the pocket on a piece of paper stapling snips of each fabric in the order they would be sewn to the backing/batting. You can skip this step if you like a random look.
For a description of the quilt-as-you-go technique using fabric strips, see my post "Carrot Mug Rug" showing details of the method. Basically, I started on the left of my backing/batting and placed a strip right-side-up along the edge of the backing/batting. I put the next fabric strip right-side-down on top of the first strip and using a long stitch, I stitched the strips together with a quarter-inch seam along the fabric edges furthest away from the outside edge of the backing/batting piece. Your bobbin thread should match, contrast, or coordinate with your backing fabric. I used light gray thread throughout the project; I used black thread for topstitching the black binding.
I pressed that second piece of fabric open and placed the next fabric strip face down, aligning the raw edges and stitching them together along the raw edges.
Then I pressed that strip open and continued with all my strips, stitching my wide piece with the pocket attached just before the last narrow strip.
When I was done with all the strips, I topstitched each strip 1/4-inch from the seamed edge. I used light gray thread for all stitching; I used black thread to topstitch the black binding.
I trimmed each quilted mat and bound the edges with 2.5-inch black binding strips, mitering the edges. Each mat took two width-of-fabric strips sewn together (about 84-inches or 2-1/3 yards) of binding.
Here is a photo of a placemat without the pocket strip -- quilted, topstiched, and trimmed before the binding is added.
On the backing (floral panel) side of the quilt/mat below, one line of stitching is from the quilt-as-you-go strip additions, and the second line of stitching is the top stitching. It looks nice.
For my binding, I fold my 2.5-inch binding strip in half and press the fold. Then I stitch the binding right-sides together on the back of my quilt/mat, using a half-inch seam allowance, and mitering corners as I go. Then I fold the binding over the edge of the quilt and fold under the other edge of the binding and clip the hemmed binding in place. Then I hand baste the hemmed edge of the binding to the front of the quilt/mat before machine top-stitching along the edge of the binding to secure the binding in place. It's not as tedious as it sounds, and after years of trial and error, it's the only way I can get my binding to look nice.
Four "Botanica" quilt-as-you-go placemats for a birthday present. Happy birthday!
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