Tutorial: Not Alone Star quilted placemats

I am slowly but surely filling up our house with quilts. But since our couch is getting quite full, I've recently started thinking about other ways to incorporate quilts into our house. I love the useful nature of quilts as well as the visual appeal so I decided to make a set of quilted placemats using my Not Alone Star quilt pattern. It was also a good project to practice my hand-quilting. I hand-quilted all of these placemats in the evenings over a few days - the perfect relaxing couch evening activity.

This would also be the perfect project to update your Thanksgiving or Christmas table decor or to make a set or two as holiday gifts! Homemade gifts are my favorite to give and receive.

Not Alone Star Placemats Tutorial: Supplies

• Not Alone Star quilt pattern: Printed pattern or PDF pattern
• Fabric - To make 8 placemats follow the fabric requirements for the *Baby Size Not Alone Star Quilt
• Marking tool - I use a Sewline pencil to do all my fabric marking
• Pins
• Batting - I used leftover from several quilts I had longarm quilted. You will need (8) 16" squares of batting

*The only exception to the fabric requirements are for Backing and Binding fabric:

• Backing Fabric: 2 yards
• Binding Fabric: 1 yard (2.25" binding strips)

Not Alone Star Placemats Tutorial: Instructions

Follow steps 1 through 15 in the Not Alone Star quilt pattern to sew and assemble your star "blocks" (placemats). I made my placemats scrappy with a variety of golds, blues, and browns for the stars and a variety of dark grays and blacks for the background. The binding is Peppered Cotton in Blue Bell.  

Cut (8) 16" squares from your backing fabric.

Cut (16) 2.25" strips from your binding fabric.

Make a quilt sandwich with your star block, batting, and backing fabric and Baste as desired. My preference is to pin baste because it is less messy than spray basting (in my opinion).

Quilt as desired. Like I said, I used these placemats as a good project to practice my hand-quilting. I quilt using DMC floss and I love the look of a thicker thread and big stitches. I followed the outline of the star and the outline of the inner star to make my hand-quilting stitches.

Once you have quilted the placemats, trim and square up the placemats. They will be 15" square.

Sew (2) binding strips together for each placemat. I sewed the binding onto the front with my sewing machine then hand-stitched the binding on the back of the placemats using a big exposed stitch. I love how this adds extra character to each placemat.

And that's it! Make a set for yourself and a set for someone else! Or a Thanksgiving set for yourself AND a Christmas set for yourself. You have options. 

Happy sewing!

Be sure to tag #plainsandpine and #notalonestarquilt if you share photos of your project on Instagram. I'd love to see what you make!