Placemat process

The weather has been sizzling hot here lately, so I've been hiding out in the AC with a little summer sewing. I'm making selvage placemats in citrus and other summery colours, using some really wide selvages from Bumblebeans scrap giveaway last winter and some of my own. I'm sewing the selvages directly on the batting, mostly in diagonals, but not always. Each one is a bit different. The top left one has two strips on it from cutoffs from two placemats that got a bit big. The beauty of selvages is one can just cover more raw edges with selvages. Often when I play with selvages, I focus on the writing or the colour windows, but on these I want to see the fabrics. Some of the selvages are 2.5 inches wide, so lots of fabric is visible. I also wanted to use up the last bits from Bumblebeans's box for me -- I've given away tea cozies and needlebooks made from that box of goodies, but I haven't kept anything. Now I can enjoy some of these lovely fabrics with my supper. And a bit more process: I'm using my b/w stash for backing these placmats. I love the white and brights on the selvage side, but placemats do get dirty, and it's nice to have a darker side too. I'm planning to quilt the back to the front with a white serpentine stitch, and bind them with a b/w selvage (its four metres long cut from a quilt backing.)