Pretty Patches Placemats and Napkins, Day 6

The Leaning Tower of Terror

For the past three days my project progress has been stymied by a little phrase in the placemats' pattern directions - "randomly placed."

A normal person would not be troubled by those words.  A normal person would say, "YES!  No thinking involved!  I'll just grab a bunch of pieces, ANY pieces, and sew them together!"  A normal person would not spend three days staring at 120 pieces of 2 1/2" squares, arranging and rearranging the blocks, chanting "Talk to me, little squares, talk to me!"

I am not a normal person, as you may have guessed.  I like there to be an order of things, I look for patterns where there are none, and I spend a ridiculous amount of time on minute details that nobody else in the world would notice, or care to.  I'm also afraid of making mistakes, so I check, double-check, have someone else check, etc., etc., before I make the next step.  This somewhat explains why I have a ton of fabric that I've done nothing with.  This also somewhat explains why I have boxes and boxes of stuff in my garage that I've kept just in case I need it and I don't want to make the mistake of getting rid of it because then the whole world would collapse because I actually made a command decision and gave away that backup-to-my-backup waffle iron and what difference does it make that I haven't made a homemade waffle in five years because if I ever want to I'll need a waffle iron right away and if that one is broken then I have my backup and if the backup is also broken then I have my back-to-my-backup oh WAIT I JUST GAVE IT AWAY NOOOOOO  I'M MELTING  I'M MELTIIIIINNNNNGGG!!!!!

But I digress.

I can't decide if these colors look better this way or...

this way?  Can you check for me?  Will you look at it again
from across the room?  How about if I turn the lights down
a little?  What about if served with a plate of waffles?

So that you don't have to relive the madness that I went through, I'll fast forward and tell you what "patterns" I ended up with.  I had originally wanted to make each of the four placemats individually themed by color.  That way it'd match with the napkin.  Unfortunately there weren't enough of the purple or the orange squares to make complete borders of either of those colors, so I had "mostly" purple and orange borders, with a touch of the other colors, yellow and green.

The yellow and green themed placemats also had a touch of the purple and orange.  Also, to satisfy my desire to have each placemat be unique, each one would have the same design in the corners but in a different color.

Now that all the squares had been divided, it was time to arrange the borders.  This took a lot of time, too, making sure that darker colors were evenly distributed with lighter colors, small prints were next to large prints, and the same print were not too close or across from each other (yes, I know I have a problem).

Once I came up with the border arrangement, I chain-pieced those little terrors like a madwoman ("like" a madwoman?).  When you chain-piece this many pieces of fabric, and they need to be in a certain order in your pattern, it's a good idea to come up with a system so that you know what order they come in your pattern.  Otherwise when you cut up the sewn pieces you'll forget into what order to put them back.

Did it go this way or...

this way?

One idea is to take a photo of it.  Or you can number them, but make sure that you don't number them in the seam allowance or else you'll cover it up when you sew it (ask me how I know).

Chain-piecing does speed up the sewing process, but a handy little tool makes it go even faster.  Called The Cutting Gizmo, this little gadget cuts (yep, pun fully intended) down the time you spend separating your chained pieces.  There's a recessed and inverted razor blade near the top and you pull the threads down onto it.  Simple, but seriously, a major timesaver!

Gotta finish the chain-piecing, then it's time to sew them to the placemat centers!