I love Fall. It is my favourite season. When I saw The Orchard collection by Lewis and Irene, the colours and prints immediately made me think of Fall. I knew it would be perfect for some seasonal home and kitchen decor. As I feel like I always want to make table runners, I thought I should make something different. After some thought, I decided on making a large hot pad for the centre of the table, and some placemats. I have wanted to make placemats for a while, and a hot pad would be perfect for placing hot dishes for a nice dinner around the table.
For the hot pad I cut 5" squares. In total, I used 11 squares for this project. The squares were placed on an angle for a diamond patchwork. Originally, my plan was to make this a rectangle, but when I laid out the fabric pieces, I liked how the pad looked without the corners.
To make this usable for hot dishes, I used a piece of cotton batting and a piece of therm fleece between the quilting cotton. For the back and binding, I used Bumbleberries Fresh Olive.
The placemats I kept simple. I chose to cut a bunch of 5" squares into 2.5" squares. To give the mats a scrappy look, I arranged the squares randomly. I though of adding quilt batting, but decided on using flannel between the quilting cotton. Flannel provides a thinner layer than batting, but provides a little weight and thickness, and provides a layer for quilting. For a thicker placemat, quilt batting can be used as the middle layer.
For the backing and binding, I used Bumbleberries Fox Red.
These were quick and easy projects, and I love how they turned out. I feel my house is ready for some Fall decor. I am looking forward to using this set. It will probably get a lot of use. I might have to make a few different sets of placemats, so that I have different ones for each season. Christmas is coming up, and I have a bunch of holiday fabric in my stash. I might need some holiday placemats dressing my table.
