FO: Quilted Placemat

It's quite a while since I spotted these lovely red and white fabrics at a stand exhibiting at the Great Northern Quilt Show in Harrogate but I couldn't resist them. They were small pieces (about 10" square) and I think I paid about £1.50 for a pack of 4 pieces.

I was planning on making something for Christmas with them. The stall I bought them from had joined strips of each fabric then cut triangles to make Christmas trees for placemats, etc. I was thinking of doing the same thing and making a table runner or tree skirt or similar. As it happened I just never got round to it and I've now used them for a square placemat to go under the fruit bowl.

I had a bit of a tidy up in the kitchen the other day. This involved moving all the cookbooks to the top of the dresser making space for the scales and fruit bowl and freeing up worktop space.

Here's a close up!

and one without the fruit bowl

The pattern is from A Passion For Patchwork, in fact it's the same as the cushion you can see on the bottom right of the cover. The book gives different dimensions to cut for a few different items.

CNA Recycled Scarf

Over on the CNA forum we're having a crafty workshop extravaganza for half term. There's a variety of craft tutorials, some for adults, some for children and for all different abilities. I'm currently hosting a quilted placemat tutorial - why not head over and check it out?!

One of the ones that caught my eye though was the recycled scarf tutorial by the lovely Annie. Unfortunately I didn't have any old t-shirts to cut up but I admired the others that had been made. So I was over the moon why my husband got home and said he's ripped his top while writing on a whiteboard at work. He was perhaps less than impressed with my unsympathetic "Can I have it?" response.

So I chopped the ripped bit off the bottom and cut from armhole to armhole, leaving me with a big loop. I then cut thin strips partway up. I also cut the label out as it was a bit big. Then to add insult to injury I got my husband to model it for me cos I wasn't very well

I'm really pleased with how it turned out. No matter how many people previously made lovely ones, I did expect mine to look like I'd hacked at a t-shirt...rather like that zip corsage I made and donated to the children's toybox because I was convinced it looked like I'd just sewn a zip onto my clothes. This scarf I will definitely be proud to wear.