Place mats and Runners, Oh My! - More Beginner Quilting Projects

Yesterday we talked about a most excellent way to start on your new quilting adventure: using a pre-printed panel to make a small baby quilt or wall hanging. Making a quilt from a panel.

Place mats and table runners are basically small quilts and can be another great way to start on your quilting adventure. You can practice piecing, make a few different quilt blocks and still end up with a finished project!

Table runners and place mats are small enough that you can easily do your own machine quilting. These all utilize simple straight-line quilting and a few wavy lines.  You can test out a complicated block and if you decide you're done after four blocks, they can become a set of place mats or a table runner!  I have been known to do this for sure.

A New Year - A New Craft: Beginner Quilt Project

The start of a new year is a great time to try a new craft so today I'm gonna show you a few panel quilts I've made in the past.  A preprinted panel with, or without, borders is a great way to start a quilting adventure. The smaller size makes a perfect baby quilt or lap quilt and you can have a finished project fairly quickly.

This is a really cute quilt I made for a new baby niece last year. I added the yellow border, quilted it with a meandering hearts design and added blue binding.

 

 Here's a view of the back:

I like to make cards (I'll be sharing more of those later) and here's the matching card I made to complete a very cute baby gift:

 Here's one of the very first quilts I made and it uses a panel with no borders. This is a great way to practice your machine quilting.

 

You can some some of the wobbly quilting designs I did!

 And here is a tiny receiving blanket size quilt made from a cute piece of flannel:

 

I used this to practice a ripply water quilting motif with little sailboats to coordinate with the fabric design.

 Here's a super cute Christmas wall hanging that I made for my daughter-in-law.

 

I got to practice my s-curl quilting and finally got the hang of that motif! What a fun panel!

So you can see a preprinted panel has huge potential for a great beginning quilt project and a fantastic hand-made gift!