Finally, the fury continues. I decided to make my friend a set of sewn things, since she’s not so into the knits. Starting with…

(see the coaster backs here)

The coaster redo! These are similar to the other coasters, but better sewn and better fabric composition. They also feature an elephant butt, as promised.

The pattern is from the Simple Coasters tutorial, with two small mods. First, I clipped the batting corners before sewing the layers together, which makes the batting trimming step easier and lowers the bulk in the corners. I also didn’t hand-stitch the opening part shut, I topstitched around the coasters instead.

The pattern for these potholders is from the Amy Butler In Stitches book. I absolutely heart that book – all of the instructions are crystal clear. As a novice sewer, I sit around, thinking questions like, “do I backstitch at the ends or not?” and the book answers them every time.

The potholder fronts clearly match the coasters, but I followed the pattern to the letter in potholder assembly. These coasters are like little quilts with handles in the back. I’m especially impressed with the binding step – binding attachment is so clever! This pattern is the perfect thing to make if you’re interested in dipping your toe into the quilting pond. I have to say I’m eager to make a larger, quilty project!

I do need one thing before taking that leap into quilting – a walking foot. I don’t have one, and contents definitely shifted as I quilted the layers together. My top and bottom layers shifted by about a half inch, which is pretty significant when the binding is only a half-inch wide. If you look closely at these, you can see that the patterned blocks aren’t all the same size, especially the elephant – he’s larger than the rest due to shifting. There’s also a few puckers that were introduced during the quilting step. I think these are the most handmade looking item in the bunch, which I’m sort of bummed about.

A couple of other, small changes: I skipped the grommet, because I didn’t want to slice and dice the finished potholders to add one. There’s no way that I was redoing these if I screwed that up! I also selected some heat-resistant batting instead of the high-loft stuff that was recommended. The batting looks metally-shiny, and makes a distinct crunching sound when you bend the potholders. I didn’t realize how noticeable the sound would be, and I’d definitely pick a different batting next time.

Ooh, one last thing that I almost forgot – to bias or not to bias-cut your bias tape? Thanks for all the recommendations when I asked this question – the consensus is that bias-cut tape drapes better and is more flexible than the alternatives. For these potholders, I cut the polka-dot binding perpendicular to the selvedge, and the scallopy one on the bias. For this small project, the difference was negligible. The polka-dot binding looks worse, but I think that’s because I constructed it first.

Placemats! These are constructed exactly the same as the coasters, just bigger. I had originally cut them to be 15 by 20 inches (the same dimensions as the placemats in the In Stitches book), but that seemed huge to me. I trimmed an inch off each side to make them 14 by 19 inches. The one inch trimming worked out well, since each color block is 2 inches (plus seam allowance) wide.

Staggering the color blocks was a very smart idea, as accuracy wasn’t my strong suit here. I’ve been using this cheapo rotary cutter, and the blade dulls extremely quickly. Would investing in a nicer cutter be worthwhile? The cutter itself is fine, it’s the cheapo blades that make me bonkers.

I used my two food fabrics for backings, then picked the others based on color. I want to run away and marry that number fabric, I keep trying to devise projects that need the number treatment!

All in all, these projects were a great way to use up some of my ever growing fabric stash. I’ve been buying lots of fat quarters and 1/8 yards of fabrics, and many are down to scraps after finishing these projects. If I were to make these again, I would cut the largest items first – I was struggling to find large enough pieces of fabric for the placemat backs, and just barely ran out of the brown cotton with one placemat front to go. Now to go and replenish that stash – have you seen the Echino Woodland Damask print? And the Full Moon Forest collection? Want!