Color block placemats

     Rarely do I ever sew anything but quilts. I am perfectly happy with it that way. However, I have an art teacher friend who had a birthday and our group of five celebrates our birthdays with food and a craft. My friend, Terri has been very good to me over the years with her estate sale finds. I thought she would like if I made her something. I have already done totes and scarves and potholders, so I thought of placemats. I wanted something with elemental colors as she had been an elementary art teacher. I found a great mug rug tutorial  but had to figure out how to upsize it for placemats. Using the online proportional calculator, I tried a 2" square and a 2 1/2" square size and found a 2" one gave me the correct sizes. I wrote these down on the printed mug rug tutorial so I always have them. 
    What I did not keep in mind was that although one was quick and fun, four took a lot longer to sew. When it came to quilting them, I used a variegated rainbow thread. Each placemat took a bobbin of thread. Pretty crazy. I used a text fabric that showed art terms for the back and picked one of my crazy fabrics I like to use for binding. They are about 15" x 19". It took about 8 hours to make these. I should have made a wall quilt in the time it took.

All pieces cut. Lots of auditioning to get fabrics right.
For example, a dk green would not work with the others.

Front all sewn before trimming

Seams sewn on back, opened up

Pinned for quilting on the 301

Quilted with variegated Isacord

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