Batik Placemats

I wanted to finish one last small project before going back to work after my summer break.  I found a Sandpiper Bali Snap in my stash and realized it would be perfect for new placemats.  I decided on  a very simple 3 x 4 square pattern as I wanted them to be large so I needed 48 squares to make 4 placemats so had to add two extra fabrics from my stash for each mat.

I quilted them with random wavy lines as I like my placemats quilted heavily to keep their shape.  I used batik fabric on the back so it will all shrink as the same percentage and not warp. Quilters Dream Blend batting and So Fine beige thread.  I do my binding on placemats by machine by sewing to the back and turning to the front then stitching them down.  I would never do this on a regular quilt as I prefer the look of a hand stitched binding.  But for a placemat it is  a quicker method and I didn’t have to hand stitch batik binding to a batik backing…not something I enjoy!

This is one of those days that taking pictures indoors worked better than outdoors.  It was cloudy so the outdoor pictures did not show the quilting so the natural light coming through the windows worked much better.  I had a nice shout out today on my quilt photography on the APQS blog, you can read their article on quilt photography here.  I also have a post on how to take quilt pictures which I wrote a few years ago.  You can check out here if your interested in reading my tips on quilt photography.  The only change since I wrote the article is I now use a DSLR camera ( Canon Rebel T4i).