Carnaby Crossing Placemats

Happy 1st day of summer everyone!

I hope you are planning to have a wonderful time vacationing or spending time with the family, making all sorts of crafts and projects together! I've been up to a few projects of my own, working with my beloved BERNINA 780 and the tons of new ideas I've had since coming home from Market.

With summer already here, I thought, wouldn't it be nice to spruce up the kitchen and dining room area for some fun, summer entertaining! I know that every now and then, my family decides to come over and visit sunny Florida with all its tropical beaches and delicious piña coladas!

So, to add a little more color to our dining table, I put a different twist on the usual placemats using selvedges from my very own fabric collections.

This is truly a fun way to add a little touch of color and design to regular placemats. Its fresh, modern... And its even fast and easy to do!

For the placemats, I used Art Gallery's Pure Elements solids and Go-Go London Lustrous from my Carnaby Street collection for the binding. For the selvedges, I used a mixture of my favorite color registration marks from various prints and placed them on top of each other, playing with different angles and directions.

What I truly love about the BERNINA 780 is that it lets me sew at ease. The presser foot automatically lowers at the start of a seam and lifts again at the end. It even cuts the thread for me! So sewing these little strips was as easy as one, two, three...

All you need is two rectangular pieces of your favorite solids and batting in the same size to make the main part of the placemat. Placing the batting in between the solids, grab strips of your favorite selvedges and top-stitch them to the three layers, playing with the placement of the selvedges and exploring multiple directions. Trim and finish off with your favorite binding method in a contrasting fabric.

I hope you enjoyed this quick little tutorial on how to spruce up your placemats! I have tons of new projects coming up so check back next week to see that I have in store for you :)

Have a great summer!
Love,