Spring Placemats

Our family is very conscious of the environment.  We try to reduce, reuse and recycle as much and as often as possible.  With Earth Day right around the corner, I thought I would share an interesting take on repurposing a common household item.

If you're like us, you have a lot of items around the house that are past their usefulness in the original state.  You think, there's got to be something you can do with them, but what?  Larry has a lot of t-shirts that can't be worn any longer and I came up with an interesting way to reuse them.  I used them as the batting for quilted palcemats. 

It's easy!

So for this project, I used repurposed t-shirts and some zippy Spring Fabrics

For this project you'll need:

Fabric for the front (I cut mine 20x14)

Fabric for the back (I had 2 that were one fabric and 2 that were pieced) also 14x20

1-2 pieces for each mat of scrap fabric such as an old t-shirts also 14x20

Seam Binding or Ribbon to finish

Scissors, Rotary Cutter, ruler, thread, sewing machine, iron

Put your placemat fabrics together right sides facing each other.  Now place t-shirt fabric on top of the sandwich, so that the t-shirt fabric is facing the wrong side of one of your fabrics as shown above.  Sew together one of the short sides. 

Now flip your placemat to the right side and press.  You should have a sandwich with your old T-shirts in the middle.  Now we will be working on the right side of the placemat.  Starting in the center and working out, quilt some wavy lines into your placemat. 

When you're done quilting, trim and add seam binding or ribbon to finish.  Now repeat the process for the remaining placemats.  I did four of these, two with solid tops and two with pieced tops.

Now set the table and enjoy your new Spring placemats.  And you can feel good that you reused something that might ordinarily be thrown away. 

I hope these instructions were clear and you enjoyed this tutorial.  Feel free to ask any questions you have.  These really are super easy and really brighten up your table!

Happy Earth Week!

Cheers~

Marti