Donna's FREE PATTERN! 2 Charm Packs = 4 Placemats AND Table Runner!

Hi, I'm Donna Jordan from Jordan Fabrics. Today we are going to make some

placemats

with

charm

squares. Here is the

pattern

I have been sketching and I think it will look very pretty. The

charm

squares are five inch squares. There is a precut that many fabric manufacturers do and they have a variety of fabrics, so you will have 40 different squares or 42 and we will choose a printed one and a solid one to make our

placemats

that we have today. the charm squares for the mosaic that are going to go here now we need to choose a couple of fabrics for the borders so I'm going to choose a nice blue and I think it will look good with these charms and then I'm going to get a print now we have everything we need, so let's go to the studio and start now.

I had never made this

pattern

before. I made a similar block, but I can't wait to see what it will look like. in one location, so the first thing we're going to do is open this up and separate the darker ones from the lighter ones because I'm going to use the darker ones in this part of the block. I'm making a set of four placemats, so I need 16 of these darker boutiques to start my placemats. Once you have chosen the 16 dark squares, we will take 16 of the light background squares and use all of these. To make quarter square triangular blocks, that means we need to mark the back of these blocks right along the diagonal.

I'm going to use a pencil, you can use chalk and whatever you find easiest to mark, we just need a clear line. right in the middle to make the quarter square triangle units, the first thing we do is turn them into half square triangles, so we'll take one of the dark ones and put the light one right on top of it. With the right sides together you will now notice that the top square is a little smaller than the other and that is because they were cut by different fabric makers - the white is measured from the outside of the pink edges and the It is in the bottom part is measured from the inside, it is okay that they are different sizes, then we will square them and cut off the excess.

I'm going to sew a quarter inch from the line on each side, now my presser foot. The presser foot is a quarter inch wide, which is very useful. Most presser feet are a quarter inch wide, so you may want to check yours and then you'll know you're sewing accurately. Now we are going to cut them in half. right along the line that we drew before, so I like to place a bunch of them and then I can cut them. Luckily, I'm putting my ruler right on that drawn line. It's pretty faint, you can't see it very well, but Cut them in half and now we'll have half square triangles to iron them on, open them up, place the light print side down and then open it up and press along that seam because these seams tend to want to bow if you just push them with the iron. just flatten it a little and then grab the iron.

Now we're going to take two of our different colored squares and we're going to stack them with the light on top of the dark and the dark on top of the light and we're going to draw another line across the diagonal in the opposite direction from the seam we made. first time. Now we are going to use the same procedure. We're going to sew both sides of this drawn line, but we want to make sure that this center seam is even, so I can feel those seams nesting and I'm just going to sew down on one side and back on the other.

Let's cut them along the line like we did last time and then each one. one of these forms a quarter square triangular block, so I'm going to cut them all out and then iron them. Now we have to square the blocks. I usually don't square my blocks if they are precisely cut to begin with. but these were made with charms that were different sizes, so they are not perfectly accurate. They should measure four and a quarter inches so you can put them on your cutting board and square them to four and a quarter, but here's a method.

I would like to use it. I'm going to bend it, and I took my ruler and I put a piece of painter's tape here at four and a quarter inches, so I measured four and a quarter both ways and put a piece of straight tape there. and I'm going to put that line on the seam line so that line is right on that seam line, then I can take my cutter and just cut it out, you'll get a couple of dog ears and you'll remove that extra part mostly off of the batik, which It was a little big, remember these were the right size, this was too big, now you can take the razor or the scissors and get those last two dog ears and now our blocks are nice, square, nice and Exactly, now let's choose 16 of the print and 16 of the white and we're going to cut them to 4 and 5/8 inches, so I'm going to get the lightest ones here.

I'm going to get all of these. the lighter ones, I have a line drawn on the back of these white ones and we're going to make more half square triangles. The half square triangles are ready. The last step is to take the remaining eight squares here and cut them to four and a quarter inches. Now I have all the pieces I need to build my block, the whole thing is four and a quarter inches and we're going to put one of these guys in the middle and then four of these are going to surround it, we're going to put the Light up next to the dark one here and I'm not going to be too picky about what happens, you can always change them and then we'll take four of these guys and put them in the corners, this is what the block looks like.

So, let's join this both ways. I'm going to flip this middle row on top of the furthest row and sew all of this together and keep them together now that we've got some of our seam allowances nestled in here, so that makes it really easy to combine right there, look you're looking at different directions, so sew this using a quarter inch seam and leave it in the machine. Now take the next pair and move it up without turning it. Sew that down now while we're at it. I'm going to open this up and we're just going to add these pieces, so this one is going to go here.

I'm turning it, not turning it, sewing it right now. I'm going to finger press the seams, so I always try to finger press the way the blocks want to go on the seams, so for this middle one I'm going to want to press towards the center because there are two seam allowances here that are bulky, so we're going to go towards the center here and that means As these should go opposite, these will go to the outside and the bottom row to the outside. Now we can sew our rows together, so there's the first block. I'm going to press these seams toward the center to iron everything. and finish the rest of the blocks, the blocks are ready and ironed nice and flat, now we need to cut some edges so we can make these placemat shaped blocks, so we will use this more solid glue on an inside edge, it's just I'm going will go on both sides of the placemats, so I need three strips cut to two and a half inches wide.

Now I need to subcut them to eleven and three-quarter inches, so I'm going to open them all up and stack them so that I can cut all three layers at the same time for the outside edge. We need eight two and a half inch pieces. This border will go around the entire placemat. They are all cut to 15 and 3/4. inches now all the edges are cut to size so they will sew up very quickly, we are just going to put the solid blue ones on the sides and then we are going to go all the way around with the print so that these fit exactly here yes The patchwork seams were left a a little too small, your edge may be too long and that's okay, you can always trim the extra lengths.

I'm going to press all these seams out with my fingers, turn them and now we can make them longer. The edges will fit exactly, we will do the top and bottom and then both sides, the top of the

table

cloth is ready. Now I'm going to press it up and then I'm going to go ahead and finish the

table

cloth. To use the flip method to attach the back, you need a meter of fabric and I just cut it into quarters, so here's a quarter here, so I'm going to put this right side up on top of a piece of batting and this It's just a piece. batting that I had left over from a quilt, you can use quilters' wool.

I like this Hobbes batting. This is 80/20, 80% cotton, 20% polyester and works great for quilts and placemats, so now it is right side up from the top of the placemat. It goes right side down and we're going to stick a couple of pins in and take it to the machine. Now we're going to sew about a quarter of an inch from this edge back at the beginning and turn in the corners that we are. Coming to the end and we want to leave a four or five inch opening enough for you to be able to stick your hand in there and then go back down.

Now we're going to trim off the excess backing and batting, so I'm just trimming these backgrounds. two layers so they're even with the cut edge, do all four sides and then we're going to trim the corners a little bit. Let me show you that once you've trimmed everything, you'll want to remove most of the excess. here so you don't have too much bulk in that corner when you turn it out now we're going to turn the placemat out so you can reach into the opening, grab it on the opposite side and just pull it to the right side.

It will be lumpy at first, but then you can put your hand back in there and work out the corners. I like to poke them and then press them with my fingernail to press them nice and flat, so get each corner out and then. we'll flatten it now you can press it with your hands turn it over do the same thing from this side and we'll take it back to the machine now we want to sew this opening there are some products there is some iron -on products, but basically I'm going to turn everything over and make a Very tight stitch right near the edge, so if you pull it from this end, the whole thing tends to pull and fold it exactly where you want it. so I'm tightening it up and I'm going to sew right near the edge.

Now I'm just going to quilt the placemat from the top here and go around the edges, go here and then. I'm going to go to the ditch to do some very simple quilting and then my tablecloth will be ready, so when I quilt in the ditch, I'm just sewing right where the patchwork seam would be and you can't really see it when you're done because it sets. hidden in the ditch and it's very quick, the placemats are ready, all the tiles for the blocks came from those two sets of lovely squares, so we finished all of these, put the borders on, but you may have noticed that we were able to make eight of the patchwork squares, so I took the four extra blocks and made a matching table

runner

, so this one has the four blocks right in the middle.

I put a border around the edge and look what a cute set that makes them all match. It was a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun doing it thanks for watching today. I hope you enjoyed our tutorial now for anyone who is interested we are giving away this great quilt here you may have seen me do this in a tutorial we did this a while ago it was so fun to make the quote. I love the flowers, morning bells, there are some hummingbirds, a pretty mosaic, so it's very easy to enter, just click on the link below that says giveaway and all you have to do is enter your name and address email and this is open to everyone worldwide, good luck.