krommama's Placemat Swap

Thanks so much for all of your well wishes for my daughter. I am happy to report that her surgery on Friday went well and, aside from being a bit out of sorts all day on Friday due to the lingering effects of the anesthesia, she's been doing great. I am glad to have all of that excitement out of the way.

I'm also happy to report that my creative mojo seems to have returned! After the kids were tucked in bed last night, I got busy. I managed to make 4 quilting bee blocks and also cut up my fabric to send to my SewConnected 3 pals. If I can knock another 2 or 3 blocks out today, and get all of my SC3 envelopes addressed, then I will pretty much be all caught up. What a great way to start the week! Pics to come soon, if the rain will stop ...

Now, for some catching up:

I participated in Sarah's Placemat Quilt Swap last month on Flickr. What's a placemat quilt, you might ask? Well, it's a quilted placemat, silly! Not much different than a mini quilt, in fact, but the quilters must all pledge not to get too upset if they see their creations with some peanut butter & jelly or maple syrup stains (the two most common in my house) on it.

I was paired with Rachel, a very talented quilter who blogs at 2nd Ave. Studio. Here is the placemat that she made for me:

(pics from Rachel's photostream)

I LOVE it! The design is simple yet so effective. The colors are so spot on to my tastes -- that background color is a beautiful earth brown. And the quilting? ... OMG, the quilting is simply amazing. It's an all-over design of small swirlies in variegated thread. It gives the quilt -- errr, placemat -- such a nice texture.


See that mini border right inside the binding? What a great idea! I think I'll totally be copying that one, Rachel!

One of the big discussions in the Flickr group is, "will you use it?" (meaning the placemat). I am happy to report that I am already using mine! You see, we recently got a brand new desk for our office. I was afraid that our computer keyboard would scratch the desk top. Well, I placed my new placemat underneath the keyboard and I am using it -- and looking at it -- as I type ... and will every time we use the computer!

Here's a snippet of the placemat that I sent to Rachel:


A few months back, I won a giveaway over at Blue Nickel Studios and received a few fat quarters of the (at the time) not-yet-released "Monaco" line by Free Spirit Fabrics. I made up a spiky design of my own and, trying to use the FQ's only and not have to buy any additional fabrics, bound it with a scrappy binding.


Here's the back -- I definitely wanted to give the peacocks a starring role:


And here's Sean & Bevin helping me show it off before I packaged it up for Rachel:


The design is admittedly very simple, but I was thinking of writing it up along with a coordinating table runner as a tutorial ... what do you think? Would anyone be interested?

Finally, let me end with some recent inspiration. I have 3 or 4 ideas for my DQS7 quilt knocking around in my head right now, but I think this one is winning out. I'm digging these pillows from Anthropologie, and think that a scrappy, fused applique mini quilt inspired by their designs might just be amazing. I saw that both Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew and the artsy-crafy babe were both also inspired by these pillows, and their interpretations turned out great.
What do you think?