I finished a set of 6 Quilt As You Go Placemats for my mom’s kitchen. She tends to pick a theme and GOOOO with it. A couple years ago she picked “lavender” as the theme of her kitchen, and bought fabric to make curtains. I made her a set of cloth napkins with the focal fabric 2 Christmases ago, and that got her scheming. She mailed me a box fabric and called to heavily hint that placemats would be a great gift, because they’d be “free” for me. Somehow despite having been a quilter in a past life, she never seems to remember that any quilt project needs backing, batting, and coordinate fabrics.
Since mom has a habit of changing her mind every few years, and asking me to recraft previous gifts in new colors or prints, I didn’t want to put a crazy amount of effort into these. I wanted them to look nice, but not break my heart when she eventually gives them to Goodwill and asks for new ones. So I picked up a June Taylor Quilt As You Go Kit from Joann’s (pre-closing announcement, when things were still on “good” sale prices.) I picked out a few coordinates, and some backing to go with the focal fabric.
I fussy cut the center pieces (making a template out of card stock), and then it was a simple matter of cutting out the batting pieces, and laying them onto the backing, and finally sandwiching on the focal fabrics. After that you just “quilt-by-number”.
Laying on pieces 2 & 3, stitch down, press, adding pieces 4 & 5, etc. Since you cut all the strip pieces at the same time, and you’re sewing 6 of the same item at a time, it goes rather quickly for the piecing & quilting.
At this point there were supposed to be 2 strips left for the corners (if you look above you can see on the bottom left that it says “15” and “19”), but I worried that we wouldn’t get enough of the focal fabric. So I did some measuring, and cut squares (then bisected them to triangles) for the corners. Sadly, even though I though I added enough space for seam allowance, I was off by 1/8"-3/16".
Here’s a closeup of what I mean.
I considered ripping out the seams and replacing the one I had done, but since the seams were ALSO the quilting, I worried about ruining the batting and backing. And since the goal was a low-stress project, I just went with it. I pressed well, then trimmed them all down, and trusted my binding to cover the gaps, which it did perfectly.
The project was overall easy, but I found the binding tedious. I honestly would rather have bound 6 full-sized quilts, than do these 6 tiny ones. Maybe because you had only stitched about 18" (max) before you had to stop, cut threads, fold/mitre the corners, and stitch again. So many threads to trim!
All in all, I really liked the kit. I liked how it allows you to pick a focal fabric, and really let it shine; how dynamic the design feels, as so often we quilt in squares and rectangles, and rarely ever in diamonds. And I like how drastically different they can look in various fabrics. Just for fun, here’s the example placemat on the cover of the kit! Now I’m wondering if I should make a set for our house…
