Pretty Patches Placemats and Napkins, Day 10

The day you (and I) thought would never come has finally arrived.  The Pretty Patches Placemats and Napkins project is done!  I did think that I was going to finish it yesterday, but as I was finishing up the binding on the Green and Yellow placemats, I noticed a problem, and I knew I'd have to redo the binding.
Actually, there were two problems.  The first was that my walking foot was having issues with the fabric.  I didn't notice it right away, but because of the narrow seam allowance, both the bottom and top feed dogs didn't have enough fabric to grab on the right-hand side, and so the walking foot did not advance the fabric.  This only happened on the corners, which, coupled with the bulk from the mitered corners that would get caught on the back end of the walking foot, made it so that the needle would punch the same place in the fabric over and over again.  Because I didn't notice it right away, a small hole was made in the fabric.  Argh.  I remedied that by going slow on all the rest of the corners, and ignoring the hole.  No point in making mountains out of mole hills.  Or sinkholes out of divots, as the case may be.

The second problem, unfortunately, could not be ignored, unless I was okay with the placemats coming undone with every washing.  It all began with the chain-piecing of the 2 1/2" blocks.  Even though I was careful to sew each block with the same 1/4" seam allowance, it turned out that several didn't come out as accurately.  It's hard to tell when one block is off by just a few fractions of an inch, but when you get a bunch of blocks being off, the combined fluctuations can result in significant issues with your project.  Basically, there's big 'ole gaps in the corners of my placemats.

I didn't notice that the borders were off until I attached them to the placemat center.  First I attached the side borders.  No problem.  But then I attached the top and bottom borders, and when I lined them flush on one end of the placemat, the seams on the other end didn't line up.

Oh no!  My blocks aren't line up!

I was surprised, but wasn't too upset when I saw it since I figured I'd get better with practice, so I moved on, quilted the sandwich and stitched on the binding to the front of the placemats.  It was when I went to flip the binding to the backing that I saw that the borders on two of my placemats were too short to meet the corners.  They hadn't been sewn down and were now flapping in the wind.

Upper right edges of corner blocks too short!

Sure, I could ignore them and move on with my life, but the minute I were to run them through the wash, they'd fray, and then I'd have that mess to deal with.  So I had to rip off the binding and redo it.  I first trimmed down the edges to make sure that the borders went all the way to the edges (should have done that the first time).

Using the ruler to trim up the edges.

Then I reattached the binding, and rechecked the edges, especially the corners.  This time it all worked like it was supposed to.

Binding tape pressed out.

Finally, all four Pretty Patches Placemats  are complete!  Whew!