Lovely Laminates = Perfect Picnics

My New Picnic Placemats

... made from the scraps from my Perfect Picnic Quilt

Yesterday I played some more with these leftover fabrics to make matching placemats.

I used extra strip pieced units from my checkerboard for the pockets 

I had a 9" strip left of this lovely chevron laminate for the back from

 Riley Blake Designs

 cut from the backing of my Perfect Picnic Quilt

This lovely laminate fabric was very easy to sew. 

The front is a soft shiny laminate and the back is a soft weave.

For quilting my quilt, I followed Madame Samm's expert advice and used a polyester thread for 

sewing the pieces of the backing together and quilting this quilt.
Usually I use only 100% cotton thread from Aurifil or Superior, but I was fortunate to have this nice box of  Robison-Anton poly thread that I won in a blog hop last year.  It was good to find a project to put them to use and they worked very well.  I used a 90/14 microtex sharp needle in my Janome.

This fabric felt like it had a slight stretch to it along the cut edges
so I was careful to not pull or stretch the fabric as I fed it to the feed dogs.
I used my heavy duty walking foot and the laminate fed easily and evenly.

There is about an inch on the top edge of front of the laminate that is not laminated.  I lined up my center seam on this line and stitched just beyond this so that I was stitching through the laminate.

This created this interesting center design along the center seam on my quilt back.

I gently pressed the back seam to one side.

As recommended by the helpful hints from Riley Blake on the sewing and care of these fabrics ...

 Design Tips from Riley Blake

I used a pressing cloth and a cool iron.

Here is my finished quilt back.

The design tips I have read about laminates have recommended wiping with a damp cloth to clean rather than machine washing.

Sooner or later I am going to have to wash this quilt ...

so ...

I decided to put this to type of laminated quilt back 
to the wash test with my placemats.

I made two placemats.

Then I washed one of them 

on the gentle cycle with cold water in my washing machine.

Then I hung it up to dry.

Here are the backs of both placemats.

The washed one is on the top.

Looks just as good as new to me!

I am pretty pleased to find that I can wash my picnic quilt in the washer on gentle cycle and hang it up to dry. 

If you sew with laminate fabric I do suggest that you put your scraps to the test before your machine wash your precious quilt.

As with all things quilty, always use your own best judgement. 

I am looking forward to using my new placemats for my next picnic.

All packed and ready to go!

Have a lovely weekend!

:)