Madison also requested a hot pad for her table that was big enough that she could set pots and baking dishes directly from the oven to the table. Again, I sent some patterns and she picked this one. I’m not sure where the pattern came from; it was a print-out that someone (probably Gail) gave me.

I used the same blue fabrics that were in her placemats; the hearts in the centre don’t show up quite as obviously as they did in the pattern but I think that is a good thing. I used a double layer of insul-bright so her table top should be safe.

Making the octagon shape wasn’t difficult but it wasn’t easy stitching the binding – all those corners.

Before Christmas Madison asked if I would make her a set of placemats. I sent her some pattern ideas and this is the one she picked; the original pattern came from Stacia. The request was for them to be made in blue and grey. I went through my stash and came up with fabrics that I thought fit the bill

This was an easy and fun pattern to make. I picked out six fabrics and since Madison wanted six placemats I was able to put some of each fabric in each placemat but I arranged the sizes and placement differently.

Quilting was just straight line as well as my often-used eight-pointed star.

I started these when I was doing my Christmas projects but ran out of 100% cotton. They were meant for us so I wasn’t in a big hurry to get them done. When I got at them again I decided to try a new finishing technique that I learned from someone in the Guild.

Rather than sew the bowls wrong sides together and turn them I added a binding. Once I had the binding stitched to the outside of the bowls and turned it to the inside I used stitch-in-the-ditch to attach the binding to the inside.

I’m not sure it was any faster to do it this way but I like the way they finished. I think having both the binding and the inside the same colour helped to hide the stitching.

I don’t know when I’ll next make a set of these but I’ll use this binding method again.