How to bind a pre-quilted placemat, or anything else!

Remember Martha? She was the very crafty lady who left lots of stuff to be gone through by her neighbor, my husband's aunt, who gave it all to me. Among the bags of crafty things, I found two panels of pre-quilted Christmas placemats. There was a set of 6 oval place mats with a Christmas swan on them, and a set of 6 rectangular place mats with a Christmas scene. All they needed was to be cut out and bound, so that's what I did!

Here's a little picture tutorial on how I used up a 44 inch square piece of green fabric from my stash to get these 12 placemats ready to be donated to my son's school holiday fair.


First I cut out the shapes from the panels.


Then I used THIS fabulous method to turn a 44 inch square of solid green fabric into enough 2 1/4 inch bias binding to finish 12 place mats and still have several yards leftover. Every time I use this method to make bias binding, it amazes me! And the best part is that I only have to sew two seams!


Then I pressed the binding in half with the wrong sides together.


I pinned the raw edges of the binding to the right side of the place mat edge.


I overlapped the end of the binding by about an inch over the beginning of the binding.


Then I opened up the end of the binding and folded about a half inch of the end to the inside and folded it back up again.


Then I lifted up the beginning of the binding...


...and placed it inside the fold of the end of the binding.


Then I pinned the layers together. This gives a nice finish to the joining of the two ends.


Then I stitched through all layers of binding and place mat about 1/4 inch from the raw edge all around the oval.


This is what the place mat looked like at this point.


After the binding was stitched to the place mat, I pressed the binding from the front, away from the place mat. This makes turning the binding to the back easier.


This is what the place mat looked like from the back after the binding was stitched on and pressed.


Then I brought the folded edge of the binding to the back of the place mat and pinned it in place around the edge.


If this were a quilt or if I had more time to finish these, I would have hand stitched the folded edge to the back. But it isn't, and I didn't, so here's what I did...


From the front of the place mat, I machine stitched around the edge so that my needle went between the red and the green and would barely show up. This is called 'stitch in the ditch' quilting and is a handy way to machine quilt without the stitching showing up...much!


And here is what it looks like finished. See, it barely shows. Just don't look too closely at the top of the picture where my stitches went a bit astray onto the binding.


The stitching from the front caught the folded-over edge of the binding on the back.


And there are the six Christmas swans all ready to dress up someone's holiday table.


Here's the stack of 6 Christmas scene place mats, bound in the same way.

These 12 place mats, along with the crocheted floor duster covers and the half-granny shawl, will be going to the holiday fair tomorrow. We're praying for nice weather and a very busy day at the fair to bring in some much needed funds for our great school.

Happy Stitching!

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