Pretty Patches Placemats and Napkins, Day 9

This is the first Day 9 I've had since starting this 52-week endeavor.  It's kinda got me down, and I want to throw in the towel and start the next project, but I gotta press on.  I can't let these placemats get the best of me!

After completing the "randomly placed" border blocks for the first (the "Green" one) placemat, a thought occurred to me.  I was still bothered by the randomness of the border blocks, and irritated that I couldn't make color-themed placemats.  Even though each placemat had more of one color than the others, because of the irregular pattern, the main color didn't stand out.  So, I redesigned the borders so that the main colors were the longer top and bottom strips, and the other two colors were the shorter side strips!  I made the Green and Yellow placemats the random border placemats, and the Purple and Orange ones the color-highlighted placemats.  Yay!  Happy me!

The pattern called for batting in between the placemat top and backing, but I didn't want to buy more batting, since the batting I do have is already earmarked for other projects.  Instead, I used some muslin leftover from the  Simple Circles Table Runner.  It's definitely not as lofty as the batting, but that's alright because there's no more room in my linen drawer for the thick placemats.

My quilt sandwich: top placemat layer, muslin, and backing.

I used my walking foot to stitch the quilt sandwich.  I didn't do any elaborate topstitching, just the basic stitch in the ditch method where you run your stitches in the seams.  And I didn't to anything more than the perimeter of the placemat center.  My quilting skills haven't made it past stitching in a straight line, so the fanciest designs I can do are variations of diagonal lines, and I didn't think that would look good with these placemats.

After I trimmed the edges of the placemats I worked on the binding strips.  This is the most binding tape I've made in one sitting in my life.  300" of binding tape!  That's 762cm for those of you reading this outside the US.

Next, I stitched the binding tape to the placemats.  I used my Clover Clips to hold down the binding over the edge and to the backside of the placemat before I permanently sewcure (oops!  Freudian slip!), I mean, secure, it with the machine.  I might actually get this done today!  But then I ran into two problems, so I decided to call it a day.

On to Day 10.