Quilted Scraps

If I haven't been hand sewing for an extended period of time, I get antsy.

But what I always have on hand is plenty of fabric scraps.  Some of these are from a hexi quilt that has been pieced and is still being quilted.  Some prints were specially purchased to make a rag rug.  

Whatever the source, there were a lot of scraps, some handily stashed away in a single bag which made finding them easy.  So when I needed a hand sewing project, I thought that it would be fun to start another English Paper Piecing project, just not a full sized quilt because I still have one of those to actually quilt!

The obvious choice was placemats.  I have been using a set that has pops of red, and my downstairs is very cool color themed.  Not to mention the fact that the rugs that I made are being used downstairs, so using scraps from those projects makes everything very color coordinated. 

I went searching for a design other than hexagons, and came across this pattern on Etsy.  The different shapes seemed like they would be fun, and make it possible to use even the really small scraps.

I wasn't entirely sure how to finish the pieced design when I began.   In the end, I just applied the pieced section to a piece of cotton before making my quilt sandwich.

At this point, I wasn't sure if the final placemat would be rectangular or some other shape, but at least the quilting could begin!

I ended up cutting a shape that I was hoping would work out of some packing paper to test the size.

Once I was sure about the shape and size, I basted around the edges, and cut off the excess.

The edges were then bound with a contrasting color.

Since the rest of the project was hand stitched, I went ahead and applied the binding by hand as well.

With what I had cut out and pieced, there were enough motifs to make three placemats.

The most tedious part was removing the papers from the smaller triangles and diamond shapes.  Who knew?!

I ended up using a pin to get under and pull up one edge of the paper so it could be removed.

That was the placemats.  But I did have a few poppies leftover and I didn't want to waste them or let them be relegated to the land of abandoned projects.

They were almost too large for a coaster, but that seemed like the logical thing to make to match back to the placemats.

So now I have two little mini placemats, or coasters, or hot pads on hand.

This project was a lot of fun.  My fingertips may not agree (still haven't learned to use a thimble properly) but the joys of hand sewing got me through.

And I enjoy these placemats so much more than what I was using previously.

Which makes for a successful project!