Autumn is one of my favourite seasons. Actually, I love every season, but autumn with its beautiful and warm colours is my favourite. With those beautiful colours come tasty ingredients to cook with, like parsnips and pumpkins. The time for warm soups and fragrant stews is here again!
Autumn was also the theme of the fabric selection that Barbara from Das Mach Ich Nachts made for her September box. It contained a number of fabrics from the Wild Forgotten collection designed by Bonnie Christine for Art Gallery Fabrics. The fabrics have lovely autumn motifs and colours.
During our short holiday a few weeks ago, I found a few more beautiful matching fabrics when we passed by a fabric shop called Stoffwechsel Meterweise on one of our walks. It is the dark green fabric with flowers and the fabric with the small checks.
My inspiration for this project came from Sandra (who you might know as Cherryheart on social media). On her YouTube channel, you can find a vlog where she shows you how she made her pumpkin placemats. As soon as I saw this video, I knew that I wanted to make placemats in the shape of a pumpkin too. And I immediately knew which fabrics I wanted to use!
Sandra used very nice fabric scraps from her stash and added some details by hand. Her placemats look perfectly scrappy! I am not very good when it comes to ‘scrappy’. I find it hard to place fabrics randomly. I prefer to see how it will turn out beforehand. Yes, that is sometimes difficult…
So I chose a more structured or planned method for my placemats.
Making the Pumpkin Placemats
I started by making a template and did this on my computer using design software. This way I could easily print the template for the pumpkin and adjust the size if necessary.
I then cut fabric strips with a width of 2, 2.5 and 3 inches and started working with them. I first made a block of horizontal fabric strips for each placemat. Then I sewed a few vertical strips on both sides. Some strips are made entirely from one piece of fabric, while others are made up of several small pieces. I went on until my piece was big enough for my paper template.
I placed my piece on quilting fleece and used the machine to sew a diamond pattern through both layers.
Then I sewed on the backing and voilà, the placemat is ready!
Do you want to make these placemats, too? I created a tutorial for it, which you can find on my website!
Ta-dah!
I bet you are curious about the result now… so here we go!
Did you notice that I got all the autumnal decorations from the attic that I could find? I love the pumpkins. They are made of earthenware, so they are safe to keep inside without rotting. A risk you have with real pumpkins of course. They look so real. I have been using them for years.
I think the stalk turned out really well! I chose to use felt for it and the combination of materials fits nicely.
Oh, and the cake was a bit of a coincidence! But very fitting!
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