Pintrest Christmas placemats

Pintrest is the devil.  Or at least his little sister.  I try to limit my Pintrest browsing time to during my morning coffee but sometimes that becomes two cups of coffee and then whoops- it's noon.  As a crafter my biggest beef with Pinners in general are the missing links.  I hate it when someone links to a tumbler (last time I checked at tumbler was a glass!) and there are no directions on how to accomplish the look in the pin.  I try to always link my Pins to good sites, even if I have to link back to my own blog.

This year due to money < time, I made all of my family place mats for Christmas.  The first set I tackled were for DT's brother and his family in Chicago.  Frogs have a special place to DT's family so I designed these place mats based on this pin.  I giggled the entire time I was designing this place mat.  I freehand drew out out the pattern, using the pin as inspiration.  The light green fabric is rit dyed Osnaburg cotton that I had dyed for a tunic (and promptly went yuck!) and cotton twill.  The buttons came from my button stash.  I made 2 frog place mats and 2 lily pad place mats with lotus flowers.  Unfortunately I don't have a pic of the lily pad place mats but DT liked them so much I will probably make a set for us this summer.

The second and third place mat projects I made were both easier and harder.  Easier because they are squares- yay!  Harder because these took forever to finish- at least a full audio book.  I made 12 place mats for DT's brother here in Columbus and 4 place mats for my sister's MIL.  I used the same fabric for both- a cotton yarn like weave from the fabric stash with a rust red cotton twill backing, again from the stash.  For DT's brother I used 2 sizes of cranberry grosgrain ribbon for trim.  My sister's MIL has a much more neutral decor and I used the below gold braid.  I also neglected to take a photo of BOTH d'oh!  I still have some of the below fabric.  I think it was purchased when I was still in my RenFair phase and thought I would make bodices and sell them.  Turns out I detest both Monty Python and the Holy Grail AND The Princess Bride and couldn't imagine spending my free time sewing for people who could only quote those movies.  I'm glad this fabric found a use, it was getting lonely in the WTF box in the attic.