Craft Blog

D being highly impressed with his new placemat

My eldest son has just made the move from his high chair and onto a booster seat at “the big table”, yay for creating more space by putting the high chair in the garage (at least for a few more months until his younger brother needs it!), less of a yay for my dining table constantly being under a barrage of crumbs, melted cheese and sticky pesto.

So, as with most tutorials on here, out of necessity I made up a placemat for him. It’s very simple, won’t take too much time, and if you’re just starting to use bias binding it could be a great practise project as it doesn’t have to be perfect… unless you have a highly critical toddler and fortunately Declan hasn’t reached that stage yet

you will need

You’ll need

• Two fat quarters, one for the front and one for the back, for me a cheapy polkadot from Spotlight, and a novelty print I picked up years ago from Timeless Treasures.
• Co-ordinating bias binding, either manufactured or your own
• Clear contact paper (plastic laminate in the UK)
• Thread, scissors and an iron

Cut your fabric to size, mine were 12×16 inches, this fitted perfectly onto the width of my laminate. I also traced around a cup at the corners to give them curves, a good idea if you’re new to mitring bias binding . Iron them well before going onto the next step.

Lay the laminate on top of your fabric

Peel the backing off and lay your laminate on top of the pretty side of your fabric, sticky side down, making sure that you don’t have any creases in the fabric or air bubbles in the laminate. Place a piece of cotton on top of the laminate to protect it and iron it on a cotton setting making sure not to touch the laminate with the iron. This melts the laminate to the fabric below and creates Oil Cloth/Vinyl. Don’t hold the iron in one place for two long or your protective fabric may become attached to it as well! Repeat for your second fabric

Trim the excess laminate from your fabric, place the two sheets of fabric wrong sides together and pin your bias binding in place. Sew the bias binding on as you would normally. Your needle may pick up adhesive from the laminate, making it sticky to use in the future on other projects, so you may want to wait to make this until your needle is nearing the end of its life.

Place your protective fabric on top of the finished placemat and iron once again just to smooth out any bumps caused by sewing the binding on… and you’re finished! I’m planning on making up a second one for my nappy bag for Declan to use whilst we’re out (like most toddlers he has a tendancy to remove things from the plate and place them on the table and I’m never sure how often said tables are cleaned!) and making a matching drawstring bag to keep the mat and his cutlery in, I’ll update when I’ve got that done.

Just a note, in the process of testing the fake oil cloth I put the mat into the washing machine. The laminate remained fused to the fabric, but crinkled oddly, ironing it in the same way I did whilst making it smoothed out some of the wrinkles but it still didn’t look as good as it did before washing. So it’s water resistant and very wipeable, but I would only put it in the washing machine as a last resort.

Related posts:

1. Toddler Safe Paint Recipe
2. Tutorial: How To Fold Fabric – Fat Quarter Style
3. Notebook Cover Tutorial
4. Sewing Machine Cover Tutorial
5. Fantabulous Pincushion Tutorial