A couple of months back I was asked at my WI if I would make a placemat for a WI competition to be judged at the Great Yorkshire Show, I tried to duck it but without success! I don’t like making stuff just for a competition if I don’t think I’ll like or use it afterwards and we don’t use placemats at home.

I then thought if I made a sewing themed one I could use it as a mat to put my overlocker on, I had in my mind some pre-printed panels from Raggedy Ruff designs. When I found the schedule again however, I discovered it could be no bigger than A4, or about 8″ by 11″, barely big enough to put a tea plate on never mind a dinner plate and cutlery!

I was rummaging through my stash and a file of unfinished, abandoned projects, when I found a pair of star blocks which were made for a totally forgotten about QAL by Pat Sloan called Bloomtopia back in 2021.

They were pretty much the right size, just needed a bit of a border top and bottom to widen it a bit. I had a rummage through my scrap box and found some scraps which matched perfectly, but when I say scraps, they were scraps!! One was too narrow, the other too short! The bird border is pieced down the middle, I just managed to find a line that didn’t chop a bird in two! The plain strip was too narrow so I used two strips!

As you can see I did a decorative line of stitching to hide the most obvious seam line. I quilted round the star ‘in the ditch’, which I was pretty pleased with as it’s not as easy as it sounds to stitch exactly on the seam line.

I backed it with a modern style leaf fabric which was in just the right colours. The binding is from another scrap – I could just get four strips out of it to make a long enough length of biding to go round. It’s a pretty stripy cotton which I bought in Amsterdam years ago, cut across the stripes it makes a pretty binding.

Having put the binding on, the fancy line of stitching on the two borders was in a funny place, so I added a few more lines of quilting!

Well it’s done! It won’t win any prizes with it’s lost points and wonky seams, but we have an entry! I might just use it as a large mug rug in my sewing room afterwards…and fingers crossed they don’t ask me again next year!