Some Placemats

One of my groups is a collection of ladies with very varied craft skills. and we meet in a Co-op shop that is run by a group of very talented crafty people.  Their skills cover not just textile art, but glass fusion, paper, leather, silver....

We meet monthly and usually have a bit of a project where those who know share with those who don't know.  In 2025, at our first meeting, we made some name tags from random pieces of textiles.  

At one session, I showed how I make a couple of my angels, we have had a session on diagonal crochet blocks, one session of scrunching up paper with hand lotion etc...I missed that one sadly.

I also ran a session about making EPP hexie flowers.    A lot of the ladies had done this before.   I took along some fabrics left over after another group that some of us were in stopped, and I took the hexies "papers" and needles and thread.

Once the hexies had been made, I used them to create placemats - the plan being that we would donate them to the Meals on Wheels group in that area.   (Different groupd to my local one.)

I appliqued the flowers to fabric - added wadding , quitled and bound them.   Some of the ladies helped with the hand sewing of the binding of the first lot and then I put on the big girl pants and machine bound some of them - still not my preferred method, but it is a bit quicker...LOL

We have 17 to donate so far......

Here are a few:   

Not great pictures, I just like to record a few to jog my memory later on.

RSC - September - Pastel

"Pastel" is a bit tricky - I don't store my fabrics by tone.....I decided pastel could be pale and I found a few bits and cut a few bits to make 3 placemats

I only made 5 Colourwash blocks.  (1) because I am not sure if they will suit the project I am planning...and (2) it's late in the month and I am running out of time . . LOL

Interesting exercise???
I forgot to crop my picture before I uploaded it - so I decided to give Co-pilot a try! This is the result when instructed to use the focus area and to remove the background.....AI can be very clever.

October is brown & black - although Angela gave a lot of options!

RSC - August - Aqua

The August colour is Aqua.  Although Angela said if Aqua was too hard, do more blues...LOL.

But where does Aqua start & finish . . . and what about Turquoise & Teal??- they are all close on the colour wheel.

I did a bit of googling and found these graphics.  Interesting that both Aqua and Turquoise are "Brilliant bluish green" but Teal is "Moderate bluish green".

Aqua
Color coordinates
Hex triplet	#00FFFF
sRGBB (r, g, b)	(0, 255, 255)
HSV (h, s, v)	(180°, 100%, 100%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	(91, 72, 192°)
Source	HTML/CSS[1]
ISCC–NBS descriptor	Brilliant bluish green
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Turquoise
Color coordinates
Hex triplet	#40E0D0
sRGBB (r, g, b)	(64, 224, 208)
HSV (h, s, v)	(174°, 71%, 88%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	(81, 59, 179°)
Source	X11
ISCC–NBS descriptor	Brilliant bluish green
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Teal
Color coordinates
Hex triplet	#008080
sRGBB (r, g, b)	(0, 128, 128)
HSV (h, s, v)	(180°, 100%, 50%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	(48, 38, 192°)
Source	HTML/CSS[1]
ISCC–NBS descriptor	Moderate bluish green
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

I also found some general info re colours:


Red: passion, physical energy, warmth, aggression, and danger.
Yellow: happiness, creativity, mental stimulation, impatience, and cowardice.
Blue: calmness, honesty, trust, stability, and responsibility.
Orange: spontaneity, adventure, dynamism, warmth, exhibitionism, and superficiality.
Green: growth, freshness, harmony, prosperity, envy, and greediness.
Purple: spirituality, imagination, mystery, royalty, wisdom, and immaturity.
Pink: unconditional love, sympathy, femininity, comfort, playfulness, and childishness.

Anyway - I raided the stash...not too many precut strips - so I cut a bunch of strips.

I made these at the recent retreat and finished the placemat bindings at home:

4 Placemats

18 Colourwash blocks

Next month is "Pastels"....wonder what I will find to use??

RSC 2025 July - Purple

Purple!!!    An easy colour for me...
I didn't have too many pre-cut strips, so I tackled the purple drawer.  I cut placemat backings, bindings & strips from some older fabrics that I had collected many years ago as part of a subscription to AP&Q.  Then I cut strips from most of the fabrics in the drawer and did a general tidy up.  For once, the drawer is not chock-a-block!!!

I ended up with 6 placemats

and 28 colourwash blocks

Next month is Aqua (I may include teal).

RSC 2025 June - Orange

The colour for June was Orange.  There weren't too many "scraps" in the container, but after a bit of cutting to make scraps, I managed to get enough to make 25 Orange Colourwash blocks, which I made on retreat last week.

and 4 placemats.

Ready for RSC - July . . .what will it be???

Oh!!!   I just checked - Purple!!!    my favourite.

RSC 2025 April - Red

Red is another colour that I do not have a lot of . . .but I found enough to make 3 placemats

and 20 Colourwash blocks

That will do for now.

Chookshed Challenge #2 - Placemats for Meals on Wheels

My #2 for the Chookshed Challenge was to make placemats to donate to Meals on Wheels.  I didn't specify a number, but wanted to use a pile of fabrics that had been lingering . . .

I made 6 of these:

and 7 of these

Thanks Deanna for hosting our challenge...it is really motivating!

FNSI - August - and SS Retreat

Lucky to be on a real retreat for FNSI - August with some of the "Sunday Stitchers" ladies.

I started sewing mid afternoon - and quilted these pieces - ready to be made into placemats.
My employer gives us two Volunteer Leave days a year - so I used one of them to sew for charity and saved a day of Annual Leave.

Great to share my progress with Wendy and fellow FNSI'ers.

A lot of my fellow sewers were finishing off charity quilts and I think a bit of my Saturday morning was spent discussing them as well as a bit more quilting and starting on making the placemats.

After lunch - it was Mystery Project time.   Helen and I had been selected to think up a project for the retreat and as we have been quite focused on charity projects lately . . .and we had been able to secure some unusual fabric (ie not suitable for quilts, but still useable), we decided that the project could be placemats to give to Meals on Wheels.
A few weeks ago we had cut the tops, wadding and backings - everyone had been asked to bring a walking foot if possible and green & burgundy thread.

We handed out 2 to each sewing person and by Saturday night we had a stack of 14 finished mats.

After that, I was able to finish off my set of 7 (odd number I know - there will be more)

Then I moved onto a "Secret Project"

Overall, it was a great fun weekend - we were in a new venue - the lighting wasn't excellent, but I had taken a light (fortunately).

Most of the crew sewed charity things all weekend - I forgot to do a tally - but at least 4 jelly roll race tops were finished, one quilt top of squares and many tops had borders added.

There was time set aside for Morning & Afternoon teas and lunch - dinner was a bit of "eat whenever you want to".

Two retreats in a month??? - easy in some ways as I really only had to pack & organise once - but also a bit too close to each other.   Nevermind, rather have too many than none.

FNWF & Retreat Day1

What a great way to join in FNWF - on a retreat!

Hope all my cyber sewing friends had a great night!

Day 1 projects:

Maureen added a border to this cube quilt - ready for a charity donation

I made 8 coasters and a scrap bucket

Sue made a bag to use for work

Inca made 6 placemats - these will be donated to Meals on Wheels

Maureen has added sone yo yos - some very tiny - to this top

Helen put this quilt top together

Alison has made a jelly roll quilt - for charity donation

and the To Do/ Done board at the end of the day (or early morning)

Highfields Retreat

The Qld Covid gods were smiling the last weekend of August and we were able to have our Sunday Stitchers Highfields Retreat.

We had 14 people gathered and started sewing sometime Friday afternoon and went until Sunday night.

I had a few things planned and was able to achieve all of it.

First up was to make a collection of left over bits into a quilt top.  
This is the result of 2 main quilts I made many years ago (in  2011) - plus one more that is "just sitting".  I made that one in 2020.
It's not very big (30" x 42")
If I find something I can add to it I might do that - else I may keep it to finish off as a doll quilt for Miss Adorable Grand Daughter.

I had reserved Saturday for a "Volunteer Leave" day.  My employer gives us 2 days a year that we can do volunteer work - what better way for me to use a day of it than sewing??
This year I made placemats to give to Meals on Wheels - yes more than 7 hours of work and I'm very grateful to Norreen for finishing the bindings for me.

They carried over into Sunday as we made our Secret Project on Saturday afternoon.

Directions and instructions were kindly passed on by Marilyn.

This is mine (it looks a bit wishy-washy here - better in the next picture)

and this is the group of them - what a colourful bunch!

I had taken a bundle of blocks and fabric along as Helen had volunteered to turn it into a child's quilt - the SS group are donating quilts to a Domestic Violence Shelter and we thought this would be a good one for a child.   So I helped a bit with that - three rows had been joined - but this is mainly Helen's work.

I also did some hand stitching and some crochet to fill in a bit of time.

A really lovely fun weekend and we are all grateful that we were able to go.