Stack and Slash Placemats

 

I took a class with one of our local quilt guilds. A friend of me, who belongs to that guild invited me, and I happily accepted that invitation. I'm learning about quilting, and practicing various techniques for piecing and building finished items. I thought, hey! a placemat is something I could accomplish!

This is one of the finished placemats

The project turns a set of fat quarters - plus a yard of fabric and about that amount of batting - into a set of 4 placemats. I stacked my fat quarters, and slashed them with the rotary cutter. the next step was to put the middle section on the bottom of the stack then sew those three sections together. Then, slash a section from each side, and again, move that strip to the bottom of the stack, and then sew the pieces together for each placemat.

Finally, I pinned the layers together, and did some stitching to quilt the layers, and then turn the edges of the back to the front and sewed them down to complete the placemats.

I really enjoyed playing with these fabrics, BUT I don't know many people who actually use placemats. I do think the technique (with some modifications) would make some beautiful fabric boxes, though. Or, now that I think about it, mug rugs, which would be smaller that these placemats. I AM really glad I got to use these coordinating fat quarter fabrics together, I think they are beautiful! I didn't take nearly enough pictures, though.

I Learned a New Crochet Technique: Corner to Corner

 I have a friend who makes some amazing crocheted items like scarves and baby blankets. She combines some beautiful yarn, with a cool technique that I had not seen used before. She asked me if I wanted her to teach me how to do it, and of course I said "Yes!!" I probably added "please" to my reply. At least I hope I did.

My learning samples

As you can see, there are two basic techniques, both are variations of granny squares. If you can make a granny square, you can do these. The thing that takes practice is how you advance them. I really like the texture in the smaller sample, and I've worked on that one first. I started simple, with a scarf from the same yarn I made the samples from. 

Here's the scarf in progress

Child sized blue scarf for donating

The technique makes stairstep rows, alternating the orientation of the stitches. I really like the texture it creates. I have found that I like to experiment with texture in crochet, so I was really glad to add this to my "toolbox." Yes, I did a single crochet edging at the ends to be a finish on it. I also made a second scarf, experimenting with some different yarns for a stripe.

Nice diagonal stripes

Since I carried the pink thread along one side of the scarf, I felt like I needed to give it an edging because that yarn showed. 

Currently, I am making a baby blanket from a fuzzy yarn that I found at Cruces Creatives. The yarn is variegated, and I wasn't sure how the colors would pool (sometimes I find the pooling disappointing). I thought about starting as a scarf, but I worried whether I would be able to pull the fuzzy yarn out to start over, so I just went for it!

This is the yarn. Pink Sands

And here is how the blanket is coming along:

I am liking the pastel stripes

This is a little over one skein of the yarn (they are not big skeins). I have three more skeins, so I will continue to increase until I get into the third, skein and then I will start to decrease. It seems to be squaring up pretty well, even, so far.

I'm glad to learn something new!!