Hi and welcome 😊 I'm still away on vacation but technology is allowing me to schedule these posts. If all goes well...(and of course it will!), when you read this, I'll be on the Atlantic Ocean, making my way to Portugal. Once we finish our cruise, we are spending a few days in Denmark with my brother, SIL and niece. I'm mentioning them because this post is about the gifts that I made for them before leaving.

What do you bring with you from home when you don't have much room in your luggage? Scrappy placemats of course!

Scrappy Neutral Placemats

Here are the three scrappy neutral placemats that I made. Each is finished differently.

Three neutral placemats - ready to leave 😉

This placemat is the least neutral...which of course means that it's my favourite! 

The most colourful of the neutral placemats

The next two placemats are scrappier. For one of them, I sewed up strips into sections, slashed them, rotated and then added the diagonal strips.  The other one has the diagonal strip in the side corner.

Scrappier neutral placemats

The most neutral of the placemats

There are three different bindings on the placemats. The top one is a yellow tone-on-tone fabric and I ended up binding it totally by machine. I did manage to miss a few spots on one side, so I'll be bringing the thread with me and hand-stitching those spots. I cut the binding at 2¼". I'm sure that it would have been fine if I hadn't been so stressed (I finished it the day before leaving!). 

For the other two placemats I found brown binding fabric in my stash that had already been cut at 2½". The placemat with the centre diagonal went on great and I stitched it by hand. If you look closely to the third one (with the side diagonal), you'll see that I managed to sew the binding on to the wrong side of the placemat. In theory it shouldn't make a difference but it did. I stitched that one by machine. 

FMQ the Placemats

Here are a few pictures of the FMQ. For the two scrappy placemats I used my walking foot to create straight and diagonal lines, and then added FMQ for a bit of curves and zing.

Free motion and walking foot quilting

More Free motion and walking foot quilting

FMQ in the spaces between the walking foot lines
as well as a feather near the top

FM and walking foot quilting as seen from the back

The last placemat I made is entirely FMQ. My intention was to lightly FMQ it... but that's not what happened 😁 I FMQ most of it, bound it and then finished quilting it. 

FMQ details of the most colourful neutral placemat

What I learned

• The first two placemats were made and finished a while back but I only finished the last one the day before leaving - not a good idea since I had so much to do.
• I do love how they came out. I think that this is the first time that I used the walking foot so extensively and then added FMQ. I really love the effect.
• I find that straight lines are harsher - that's why most of my FMQ is made up of curves. It lightens things up!

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. Why not check some of these out after you've linked up below? Put your foot down, Off The Wall Friday, Finished (Or Not) Friday, Beauties Pageant, TGIFF, Patchwork & Quilts, Sew & Tell, Design Wall Monday, Monday Musings, 

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 549 of Free Motion Mavericks! I hope that you're having a good party without me 😎! I will be reading your posts and comments but since I don't have my laptop, I'll be skipping the features while I'm gone. Have a great week!

It's your turn.

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