Crazy Quilt Placemat Thanksgiving Day

   I don't know about everyone else, but I had a memorable Thanksgiving (a day late). Had the Grand Daughters bring their sewing machines, actually one of them got an early Christmas present when I found out the machine they had broke. I brought fabric and tools. One Grand Daughter had some experience the other had none. I couldn't believe how well they did. They stuck with the task for about 4 hours until they finished.

   Meanwhile, their Mothers, my daughters, cooked their dishes for Thanksgiving.   (I had prepared mine the day before.)  While the food was cooking, the girls shared digital pictures with Mother of events that had happened over the past year.  All of this was happening at my Mother's.  So it was a Girls Day Out.  I LOVED it!

We did some crazy quilt piecing.

I used one of Mother's place mats as a guide to cut out the base fabric which was from an old mattress pad.

A "fussy cut piece" with a picture was chosen to start this mat.

Pieces were added all around until they reached the outer edge.

Sometimes it was like a puzzle trying to figure out how to even the edges and lay the next piece.

Once the base fabric (quilted mattress pad) was covered, the edges were trimmed to match the base.

Then 2 solid pieces cut about 3 inches over the half way mark lengthwise were cut.

One end of each piece was turned under and stitched along the edge.

(Like making the back for an envelope pillow)

Please see "Old Glory Star Pillow" Tutorial on how to make the back.

We didn't worry about cutting out these 2 pieces to match the place mat.

Just laid the 2 pieces right side up, laid the mat face down meeting right sides.

Pinned all around and stitched along the edge matching the edge of the machine's foot.

Then turned right side out.

Iron a bit and finished.

I did suggest (we ran out of time) to stitch in the ditch along some of the seams, or

to have more fun, use some of the decorative stitches on the machine, even if it's just zig-zag,

and go along the seams to add a little more of the old fashioned charm of crazy quilting.

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Thanks to the FREE programs:

possibly used for this post

GIMP for cropping & other digital effects

 Photoscape for downsizing & watermarking photo

PicMonkey creating collages used on this page