Quilting, actually quilting

After I finished the center for the Mill Girls quilt I decided to take a break from piecing and finally get the placemats done that I had gotten back to in October. So I pulled out the BSR foot and got to work.
I now have eight sets of Harvest placemats and napkins!

Placemats and shutters

Placemats are ready to be quilted! I made two variations, four each. Now to decide how to quilt them. I decided to bind them after all, rather than flip inside with a turning hole. Still debating on the binding fabric, but it could easily be the lightest fabric, which is also the napkins. Need more wooly thread for the serger, it takes two and I only have one spool each of two possible colors (which aren't quite the colors either). The checked fabric is the backing for six of the placemats. Need something for the other two.


You can barely see my new mats (from Martelli), gotten at PIQF. They cover the table nicely (moved the Alto cutting system to the old cutting table). they have different colors on each side, yellow for dark and purple for light. So far I like them a lot.
The shutters are installed! Now I don't live in a fishbowl when in the sewing room. It is a converted garage, so faces the street, and cardboard in the windows was getting old. Also have the track lighting installed. You can't see it in the dark picture at the bottom, but it goes around the room, lighting the work areas and the storage cabinets, with three different controls, which are also dim-able.


Last night I was looking at Annie Smith's blog (http://simplearts.com/blogs/), and she said it took her two weeks, 40 hours per week, to sort through her stash. So I figure it will take me to the end of the year, since I also have a day job. Which I better get to!

Placemats

While sorting through things I rediscovered the fabric I bought a "while back". I used some of it to make the triangle table runner late last year (I think) and hoped to make some placemats and napkins with the rest of it. Rather than just storing it again, I decided to just do it! found a very easy placemat idea online and went for it. I needed another fabric in order to make 8 placemats with the same coloring, but found some in the stash pretty quickly. One is pieced, and one is partially sewn, and the rest are cut into strips. I cut the strips with my Martelli rotary cutter, 8 layers of fabric, and used the Alto cutting system. Made very quick work of the cutting, love it! No pictures yet, but soon. I'll need to dig out the serger for the napkins. Retiring some placemats the other day probably helped me along in the decision to make some more. And now I don't need to find a place to store that fabric!
"http://www.quiltcetera.com/Tutorials/Tutorials/placemats.html" is where I found the placemat pattern.