How To Make Placemats

An empty and plain dinning table never attracts anyone. Also, it makes the eating a dull and boring experience. Wonder why even after using beautiful dishes and glassware, the table still lacks that extra touch which adds an oomph factor to the whole dinning experience? Absence of placemats may be the reason. They look beautiful and offer great decoration to the dinning tables. They can be of various sizes, shapes and colors. Generally, people refrain from buying expensive placemats for even parties, arguing that after all, what use is a placemat other than helping the hot serving dishes have a base so that they do not cause harm to the table. However, placemats do more than that. They add an aesthetic touch to the dinning table and make the eating experience a delightful and charming one. But that does not mean you need to shell out lump sum money for getting your hands onto a beautiful placemat. To your surprise, placemats can be made at home. Making placemats is very easy and involves a lot of fun. You can pool out creativity in making the placemats more unique, attracting and colorful. If you are planning to design a lot of placemats, then choosing a common theme is a good idea. While kids love to have placemats that are on the theme of transformers and cartoons, fruit or vegetable baskets work well for adults. Placemats complete the appearance of the table and give it a finished look. To make placemat, the very first step is to find out the number seat in your dinning table. This would be the number of placemats that you would be required to make. Learn how to make placemats in the following lines.

Tips On Making Placemats

Fabric Placemats

Things Required

2 Yards Fabrics
Cardboard
Dressmaker Pins
Dressmaker Shears
Fabric Chalks
Fabric Cutting Boards
Fabric-marking Pens
Ironing Boards
Irons
Sewing Machine
Threads
Cardboards
Pencils Or Pens
Poster Boards
Yardstick Or Rulers

Method

Select any cotton or cotton-polyester blend fabric. It can be of desired color and print. To make four placemats of 13 by 19 inch, you would need 1 yard of heavier weight fabric for the front portion of the placemats and 1 yard of lighter weight fabric for the back.
Before making the placemats, wash the fibre and press it well with an iron.
To decorate your placemat, make a pattern out of a cardboard or stiff poster board. The template or pattern should be rectangular in shape and measure 13 ½ by 19 ½ inch.
Now place this template on the wrong side of the fabric.
Then take a fabric marking pen or fabric chalk and trace around the template. Repeat the same process for the rest of the placemats.
Cut out the rectangle of the fabric along the traced lines.
Now press the raw fabric edges under ½ inch towards the wrong side of the fabric. You can use a steam setting to make sharp fabric edges. It will also ensue that the pressed edges will remain in place.
Pin the front of the placemats to its back. Pressed edges must match up evenly. Make sure that the fabric pieces are pinned together securely.
Pin its edges into the right place, so that they become perpendicular to the edges of the fabric. To ensure that all the pieces lie flat against each other, pin at the center of the placemats.
Now take a sewing machine to stitch all the four sides of the placemats. Stitch ½ inch from the edges. The moment your reach a corner, lift the presser foot of the sewing machine and swivel the fabric. By doing this, the stitching lines will remain straight. While repositioning the needle, keep it inserted in the fabric itself. Repeat for other placemats.
Once again stitch the fabric edges. Stitch them 1/8 inch from the edges of the fabric. Repeat for the rest.

Making Placemats for Kids

Collect all the material you require to make a placemat. The material include plain white vinyl placemats, scissors, markers, glue stick, clear contact paper and 8 ½ x 11” white paper.
You can stick the desired designs on the plain white paper. It can be colorful alphabets, numbers, cuts outs of animals, plants.
You can also arrange these designs on the vinyl placemats. Don’t glue them first. Instead, decide their placements. After finalizing the place for each, use the glue to stick them on the placemat. Children love to stick their name on the placemats.
One can also draw some images using markers, crayons, etc on the plain white paper. The images can be of their favorite cartoon character, animal, sport, etc.
After you have stuck the picture or images on the vinyl placemats, leave it to dry for some hours. Now measure the clear contact paper so that it will cover the placemat. Make sure that the contact paper is smaller than the size of the original placemat. Ideally, ¼” space should be left on all four sides of the placemats.
Now wipe the placemat nicely and you are done with some colorful placemats.

Quilted Placemats

Collect all the required material that is ½ yard cotton fabric, batting piece, threads of the color of the fabric, sewing machine, safety pins, sewing pins and iron.
Wash the fabric thoroughly in washing machine and iron it.
Now cut out the rectangular pieces of the cotton fabric for layering the top and batting piece. They should be 12”x 18” is size. Also, cut the backing fabric in rectangular shape with a size of 13”x19”.
Keep the backing fabric facing down. On its top, place the batting pieces, they should be placed properly.
Next, place the top cotton fabric piece on it. This piece will be kept facing upside.
Take the sewing machine. To secure the middle and all the sides of the placement, you can use safety pins before you sew them.
When you stitch both the fabrics (top and backing) to the batting piece, do not stitch it completely.
You can also stitch different pieces in various patterns and shapes. As you stitch them, keep on removing the safety pins.
Lastly, iron the placement well and you are done.

Now that you know how to make placemats, you can make some really beautiful and attractive placemats for your dinning table in a matter of minutes. Pool in your creativity and imagination, and come out with great designs.

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