a finished project!!!!

A little ago we had company over for dinner and only two (rather ratty looking) place-mats for the table. It occurred to me that this would not do, so I pulled out some cool fabric my roommate had printed when we were in school, which I had salvaged from her extreme fabric collection purge of the previous month, and got to work.

First, I ironed the fabric (note the cool Venus fly trap 'floral' she created) and a red sheet I don't use which would serve as the reverse side of the place-mats and using our old ones as a template, cut out the fronts and backs and ironed them a third time just in case (that fabric had been in a box for a long time you know). I was able to get three out of each color print and six place-mats seemed like a good number.

Next I turned the fabrics right sides together, and using a white china marker (makes an opaque mark on darker fabrics) I measured out the proper sized rectangles, I went with 14" by 20" but I did consider doing squares, and pinned all round the edges.

Then I sewed around the edge, leaving about a four inch opening on one of the longer sides so that I could turn them right side out. I also made a snap decision to make rounded corners, which kept the fabric from getting all bunchy.

I trimmed the extra fabric, snipped the corners so that they would lie flatter, and turned them right side out, and ironed them flat.

And the last step was to sew around the edge, once about a quarter inch from the edge, and once even closer, just to make sure that I closed up the open side. I also decided to add a heart in one corner, because I thought it would make the red side a little more interesting, should I ever decide to turn them that way.

And voila!

No longer will we be displaying so shabby a table. In fact now I have no excuse not to have a mini dinner party, though maybe first I need to make a Venus fly trap centerpiece, to match you know.