Hi friends!
Today I want to share with you one of the basic projects from my new book – the Bluebell placemat!
The Book
My new book with C&T publishing, Patchwork Braids, came out in January 2025.
And I love all the projects in the book.
The book is broken into chapters, each chapter detailing a specific braid technique. Chapter 1 is the Basic Braid; a great place to start! I spoke more about that in this blog post here.
The Bluebell Placemat
In the Basic braid chapter is a simple placemat pattern called Bluebell. I named all the projects in the book after flowers.
Here is my placemat as seen in the book:
I used these fun tone on tone fabrics from the line Vertex from QT fabrics. I picked the blues and greens because, well, it is my favorite color combo! And the darker colors won’t show all the spills that may or may not happen.
This project is such a great place to start learning to make braids. You get to play with color, make a basic braid and then end up with a simple to put together, but oh so fun and functional placemat!
I taught this project as a class recently and one of the questions I was asked was why so many different colors in the braid?
What a great question! Mostly because I like braids with lots of fabrics. In general, the more fabrics you use, the more the braid seems scrappy. But, controlled scrappy.
Those of you who have heard me talk about scrappy quilts know that I like my scrappy controlled.
One note about how many fabrics to use: the pattern calls for a specific number of fabrics. BUT, you can use a different amount. You can use more, you can use less. You can just cut up the scrappy bits from your stash!
The pattern tells you about how many braid pieces you need from each fabrics so… with a little math, you will know how many you need total and you can do your own thing!
Color Options
For my class, I used my new fabric line, Just Dandy, to make more placemats! And yes, it is still the same color scheme just different fabrics and slightly lighter too!
Now I want to make more. Who doesn’t need new placemats. They make a great hostess or house warming gift, birthday present of just a “I was thinking of you” present!
What color scheme should I use next? I am thinking to play with the other side of the just Dandy line- the oh so beautiful and spring like corals and rosy reds.
But there aren’t as many of the warm tones as the blues and greens so maybe I will have to use less fabrics in my braid! Or mix it up with other fabric. Hmmm…
What colors would you use?
Instagram Hop
Today, March 19th, over on Instagram, 9 other pattern designers are showing off the placemats they made playing with my book and the Mini Braid Template! You should go check it out and see what fabrics they have used. I love the variety of fabrics and styles they picked. Click here to go to IG and then click on the post and all the links to the other designers.
Some of the designers made the placemat and some… well, they are designers!! One made her placemat into a bag, one made the braids larger to show off the fabric, one made a big braid using different size strips (she is an overachiever and is on to Chapter 2!) and one made a bookmark for her daughter. That’s the fun of braids- once you learn the different techniques, you will start to see new ways to use them!
This is Preeti’s version of the placemat with the larger braids to show off the fabrics!
Connie Kresin Campbell, @freemotionbytheriver, also wrote a blog post about her placement! she used fabrics from the Forest Flora collection from Island Batik and the placemats look so good! Very different vibe from mine and just great! Check out here post here!
In a few weeks, I will share more about Chapter 2 and using various size strips in your braid and I will even have a fabric panel to give away!
Happy quilting!
Kate
Want to grab a copy of the book? Click here!
Want to see how to cut and sew braids? Check out this You Tube video I did a few (many?) years ago with C&T!