Christmas quilted placemats

In the last few days, I made patchwork placemats for a Christmas gift (to be given this week).

For these placemats, I made patchwork blocks on the diagonal, which were then sewn together.  My patchwork squares were roughly 6" x 6" for a finished placemat size of 12" x 18" (six squares). This design is similar to the patchwork trivets and table runner in Quilting Arts TV episode 711.

All my fabric strips below are sorted for each block. (Yes, there is some organization here even though it doesn't look like it!)

Here are the fabrics laid out for a block.

I sewed one block.

I put the sewn block on my cardboard template, and it is wayyyyy to small.  I added a solid red fabric and cut a strip of red for each block so they would all be big enough.

Here are most of my blocks sewn and ironed.

I tried different layouts for my blocks. The instructions (that I was semi-following) said to make diamond shapes but since I had 6 blocks per placemat I only had one and a half diamonds.

I thought about putting them in a Chevron type pattern.

Here are the final results. I cut two blocks in half (for each) and moved my diamond shape to the middle.

Lovely!

12/2/2013: See here for matching hot pad holders.