Dresdens for dinner

After the (eventual) success of the petal coasters in the last post, I felt ready to up the ante and tackle real dresden plates.  I wanted to make eight and turn them into place mats for dinner time.  I have a lovely set of four mats which I use most days, but I wanted something for when we have people to dinner.  I do also have a larger set of round glass mats for such occasions but the glass is such a harsh thing to put a plate onto.  I always worry I'll crash a plate down to heavily and they're hard for Little Miss to lay out and she does like to help where she can.

So, some pretty, floral and softly padded dresden mats seemed like the perfect answer to me.

After some humming and hawing I eventually decided on sizes and got cutting and stitching until I had eight glorious rings of flowery, fabricy heaven laid out.

This time, I had my plan of action all sorted for sewing them together.  I decided on a softer, more petal-ly curve for the edges.  So I drew myself a little temple and started layering.  First the batting.

Then the dresden.

Then my rather nifty plan for the backing.  I made the backing fabric with a seam across the middle so that I could sew all the way round my petal shapes neatly and still turn the mat the right side round afterwards.

All ready to sew.  A much neater idea than last time, don't you think?

It worked, too.  This is after I turned them inside out and gave them a press, all the curves look nice a smooth and lovely.  Oh yes, I was chuffed with myself at this point I can tell you!

It makes me feel very happy even now, looking at the picture and remembering how pleased I was with how they were looking so far.  I am easily amused, I really am.

So, just the middle circles, some lovely quilting stitches and sew up those nice, easy, straight seams on the back and ta was very much dah-ed!

Umm, scrumptious!  We had a yummy barbeque at the weekend with family where I used the mats and they were much admired.  My dad even asked if I could make a set for him - high praise indeed.  Particularly from my dad, who is not generally known for admiring or noticing the various floral bits of prettiness that it pleases me so much to litter the place with.

It's also been such a joy to have these lovely sunny days lately, I can't get enough of them.  Although I can't say I'm much of a sun worshipper these days.  I tend to prefer the coolness of the shade but it's lovely to just be outside.

I had to take advantage and have a little more alfresco hooky time today.  So relaxing, such a treat.

 And now that I'm all set for dining indoors or out, the barbeque season can begin in earnest.

S x


Update: 1/10/12

Yippee, a Dresden Placemat Tutorial is now available so that you can make your very own mats.  Click here to shoot off that way now....