Thursday 13 December 2012

Christmas table decorations

Hello there

Yes, it's definitely 'that' time of year again. Pressure on us unorganised folk to get things organised for a specific date/time. I've yet to send out the majority of my cards; only some overseas ones have been sent. One of the things I have managed to do is get my Christmas placemats and coasters made.

I made the paper rose too and the tealight holders are cool -
they're from a Partylite party I went to a few weeks ago-
there's space in the holder to place items, which you can
change to suit whatever the occasion is- brilliant idea!
I'm hoping that the astute amongst you will notice that I've done free motion quilting on them. It was the first time I've ever done a project using that method. It was great fun and obviously I got better at it as I went on. The batting is too thick really but it'll flatten once they're washed and ironed. I remembered to iron the batting before putting together the coasters, so they're not as bouncy. The main fabric of the placemats is made from old sheets. I just had to buy the starry material, of which I only needed half a metre and I got the gold thread, both from a great shop called Sew Simple in the Lady Heyes centre in Frodsham. The lady in there is so helpful, it's worth travelling a bit further for the customer service and almost knowing that they'll have what I want, as they concentrate on quilting and patchwork.

I love the effect of the quilting and of the gold thread. I do have to give thanks to Leah Day for her tutorial on making a star quilt pattern on her blog freemotionquilting. Mine don't look anything like hers but then she's been doing it for years and her machine cost at least £1500. After doing this, I really could do with a machine which has push button speed technology, an 'up/down' button for the needle, font stitches, a walking foot, a quarter inch seam foot and a few other things. That's the only trouble with crafting; there's always more you 'need' :-)


The back of some of the quilting isn't brilliant but a few of them (as I got better) are fine:

I have to confess to replacing the placemats for dinner, as we had meatballs and spaghetti, so there was no way I was going to let them get covered in pasta sauce, the very first night they were used! :-)

Take care out there

2 comments:

  1. Every Christmas Day I promise myself that I will make some mats for the table next year and every January I forget again hahaha!!!!! These are just gorgeous Diane...well done you!!! Have a lovely Christmas xxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hope you have a wonderful holiday this year! We're starting to come up with some ideas on our Christmas table decorations and these really inspire me. Thanks for sharing these inspiration. Happy Holidays!

    ReplyDelete

Go on, you know you want to comment! Have you tried anything like this? Do you want a few more snippets of information about this project to help you do something similiar? Has it inspired you or given you ideas to do it differently?

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