Sashiko Place Mats

Finished at last – my “ever so simple stitching” pair of Sashiko placemats.  Just right for the two of us while we eat our breakfast.  I started this project with fourteen keen ladies on a recent Sunday morning,  at a class with tutor Claire Smith, organised by my quilt club, Town and Country Quilters.  Claire told us some interesting facts about the history of this type of stitching, and then we got to practice drawing lines and curves onto sheets of paper.  I quite liked the curvy design marked with a coin over 1 inch squares, and we were shown how to mark up other designs too, some curved, and some made with straight lines.  Once we were sure of the process, the next step was to mark the chosen design on our fabric.  This was surprisingly time consuming, as the grid lines had to be drawn in first.

My sashiko was done by hand, using green thread on cream fabric.  The stitches should be the size if short grain rice, the tutor informed us – my stitches were more like jumbo sized grains, I have to say.  Others used the traditional dark blue fabric with white thread, and I noticed some black stitching on cream fabric which looked stunning.  At the end of the day I had almost finished stitching my simple design, so I was well pleased with my day’s work.  The design on the other placemat was worked on during a recent club stitching day. 

The place mats were completed with a little wavy machine quilting around the batik borders and then the binding was stitched on.  And the last job of hand stitching the bindings to the back of the place mats was completed yesterday when I was sitting at the dining table enjoying the sun shine streaming in.  There – all done, another job off my list.  I’m quite pleased with them, if I do say so myself.

  Two shasiko place mats