{Homemade is best…and a little easy Mother’s Day tutorial}

I painted this a VERY long time ago and it now hangs in my sisters sunroom

OK, so last week when I was visiting family for Easter, I started to notice that everywhere I looked – um, there was stuff I made hanging around. Little paintings, a fabric covered journal, quilts, stockings made from my great grandmothers old raggedy quilt, napkin rings, placemats and of course, purses. I’m really all about this handmade thing – it truly is a wonderful gift when you can give someone something you made by hand (or something someone else made – something unique – you get the idea!)

SO…here’s a cool idea for you crafty types for a Mother’s Day gift for YOUR Mother – a set of placemats and napkin rings! Seriously, easy project. Here we go:

This was my Christmas present to my parents two years ago

Materials needed – the obvious, sewing machine, thread, etc you’ll need fabric (see below), fusible interfacing and prequilted fabric.

Pick 4 different fabrics (I picked some Amy Butler dots to coordinate with some vintage kitchen prints I found). For each placemat, CUT four 5″ x 14.5″ panels.

Using 1/4″ seams, piece your panels together. Press your seams open. Next, cut a piece of fusible fleece interfacing to fit on the rear of your front panel. Cut it 1/4″ smaller all the way around than your front panel. Following the instructions with your interfacing, fuse it to the wrong side of your front panel. This will give your placemat some extra oomph and keep your cotton panel looking crisp – in my opinion.

Once you have your front panel complete, use it as your pattern to cut a solid rear piece from your prequilted cotton fabric. I used a cream color – the same I often use in my purses – sound familiar?

With right sides together, pin and sew with 1/2″ seams. Leave an opening for turning. Turn right side out. Top stitch. I also typically add some “steam a seam” to my opening just to make sure it stays shut. That’s it kids! Done! Now repeat for the rest of your set of placemats you want to make.

These buttons were from my grandmothers sewing tin

Reminds me of my grandmother everytime I look at these

Napkin rings are loads of fun when you use old buttons. My parents had given me an old tin that belonged to my grandmother full of buttons. I glued some of the pretty and larger ones to magnets and gave those to my family. For the rest, I cut a piece of wide elastic just big enough to fit around my napkins. Then I stitched buttons galore until the elastic was fully covered. I warn you – it takes a lot of buttons to cover one and it actually took me several, several hours to stitch all of these on for 6 rings.

What a great gift set. My Mom still loves hers and I loved seeing them adorn her table last week at Easter. Even my kids were impressed. “Did you make these Momma?” Ah, yeah. Hope that gave you a good handmade gift idea.

The little tie-tote in Patty Youngs Andalucia pattern

A few more dresses and embellished jeans went out this week and a cute little tie tote that my girls gave to their girlfriend for her 8th birthday. These will be finding their way to my etsy site pretty soon.

Embellished recycled jeans

Dress, embellished jeans and matching ponytail holder

Lots of orders being mailed out this week – thanks to my neighbor Barb for helping me cut everything! We need to do that more often because we never did get to our banana split desserts!

Don’t forget – just a week or so left on this month and our April giveaway will be done. The two peas will be picking a comment out of a hat and we’ll be sending you, the lucky winner, a way cool, patchwork accessory bag with an awesome buckle…I’ll share that photo with you later next week.

Keep Spring coming – I’m begging for the sun and warm breezes to start coming every day instead of snow, rain, sun, snow, rain, rain, rain, sun…we just need some SUNNNNN to stay in O-H-I-O for awhile!

xo – Trish