Four Blue Placemats - Interpreting A Gift Request

For Christmas, I'd like four placemats for the kitchen. Blue, please. That was the request from my mother-in-law a few weeks ago.

I had been eyeing this quilt in Kaffe Fassett's  book "Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts" for some time and this project would be a good one to try out a few blocks. First, I had to dig through my stash to determine where to get the best assortment of blues. For this project, the batiks had the best choices for darks and lights.

The original plan was to have two placemats with dark centers and two with light.

Then, I tried mixing up the darks and lights and liked this result much better. Since it is somewhat scrappy, using the same block layout will help the set be more cohesive. Each block will finish at twelve inches so a four inch wide strip was added to the right side of each block. The strips are four different solid blues.

Then it was time to decide on quilting thread. Of these options, I went with the small spool of Aurifil 50 weight thread. It worked best with the variety of fabrics in the placemats.

To make the placemats a little more feminine, I quilted a big flower with a spiral center on each of the main blocks.

For the solid strip on each placemat, I headed over to The Inbox Jaunt and found her Basic Leaf Tutorial to be the perfect design for filling that space.

I love seeing the thread contrast on the different blues.

The same four blues that made the side strips were used for the binding. It was another mix and match to bring unity to the project.

All different, yet all the same.

The backing for each placemat is this fun striped blue fabric. They can easily be turned over and used from the back side for a different look.

The quilting shows up nicely on the back, too.

My favorite part of this project is how it evolved. I had no idea what I would create when asked to make four blue placemats. Each step was a new discovery. And, every part of them was made from supplies I had on hand. That makes them even better.