Quilted Family Grace Placemats

Excited to share what might be one of my longest running UFOs (unfinished object) ever, a quilted family grace placemat. While I’m not religious and wasn’t raised in a religious house, my Grandpa said his grace at every meal we ate with them. He passed away when I was in college, and I knew that my Mom had his handwritten grace framed in her dining room. I asked my Aunt to help me get a copy of it, and then uploaded it to Spoonflower, printed it out, and let it sit in my sewing room for 3 years while I waffled back and forth on what to do with it.

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My only regret is that I didn’t leave more buffer space around the text – sewing it with a 1/4″ seam allowance got pretty close to the words. I hired someone off Fiverr to clean the scan up so it was easier to read, but it would be easy to do yourself as well; Spoonflower’s interface is very simple if you haven’t used it before.

I couldn’t find a tutorial online for exactly what I wanted, so I made it up as I went along! I’d never sewn anything in the log cabin style of patchwork; this is the finished, washed result and as you can see it is far from perfect. I think if I were to do it again, I’d cut the outside strips extra wide and then trim them up once it was quilted. If you’re not familiar, this blog post gives an overview of sewing something log cabin style, I used the tutorial from this Modern Log Cabin Quilting book*.

I can’t remember the maker/line of the red and black fabrics, they were from my local quilt shop, but on the back was a beautiful Charley Harper for Birch Fabrics print*. That was another hold-up in creating this project – choosing coordinating prints! My Grandpa loved birds and carved wooden bird figurines, so I thought this was a beautiful complement.  

I actually made four of them, but apparently didn’t take a picture of all four together before I shipped them off to my Mom! So you’ll just have to take my word for it. I’d love to hear if you’ve sewn an “heirloom” gift like this with a family saying or recipe – I saved a rectangle of his grace if I ever think of something I’d like to do with it for my kitchen!