Bow Tie Quilted Placemats tutorial

Placemats are a favorite item at our house and you are going to love this fast and easy Bow Tie quilted placemats tutorial. Keep reading for a very easy tutorial for making them.

Bow Tie quilted placemat tutorial

13½” x 16½”

I like to make my placemats a little big as we use them all the time and they get thrown into the wash machine and dryer weekly. The shrinkage varies depending on the fabric and batting.

I am using batiks and poly/cotton batting this time.

Directions for four placemats

Fabric:

• Lavender 3/4 yard
• Purple 1/4 yard
• Dark Purple 1/2 yard (for blocks and binding)
• Cream 1/8 yard
• Backing 1 yard
• Batting 1 yard

Cutting for blocks:

Use the following sizes to cut the pieces for four Bow Tie blocks.

• Lavender
  • Cut eight 5-inch squares
  • Cut four 2½-inch squares
• Dark Purple
  • Cut four 5-inch squares
  • Cut two 2½-inch squares
• Purple
  • Cut four 5-inch squares
  • Cut two 2½-inch squares
• Cream
  • Cut eight 2½-inch squares

Stitching the Bow Tie quilt block

• Draw a line diagonally on the wrong side of the 2½” squares with a water soluble marker or a light line with a pencil.
• Stitch a little bit away from the marked line toward the outside corner.
• Press to set the seam.
• Fold over the small square and press.
• Trim about ¼” away from the seam.

• Arrange the blocks into two rows with the small half-square triangles matching and sew them together with a ¼” seam allowance.
• Sew both rows together.
• Your block will measure 9½” x 9½” as an unfinished block and will be 9 inches in the placemat. 

Here is the 9-inch bow tie block, it is 9½-inch unfinished.

Sew the rest of the blocks so you will have four completed bow tie blocks for the placemats.

Would you prefer to make just one Bow Tie quilt block?

Cutting for one block:

• Lavender
  • Cut two 5-inch squares
  • Cut two 2½-inch squares
• Purple or Deep Purple
  • Cut two 5-inch squares
• Cream
  • Cut two 2½-inch squares

Borders:

Add borders to each block to make your placemats. If you prefer smaller or larger placemats, just adjust the size of the borders.

For each placemat:

• Cut two 4½-inch x 9½-inch pieces and add to the sides with a ¼-inch seam allowance.
• Cut two 2-inch by 16½-inch pieces and add to the top and bottom with a ¼-seam allowance.

I didn’t pay attention to the way I laid out the center block, some of my placemats face one way and the others face a different direction. Once they are on our table with plates on them…no one will notice.

Cut your backing and batting and free-motion quilt each placemat. I used a purple 50wt Aurifil thread for my quilting.

Quilt as desired.

Add binding to the placemats using my machine binding tutorial. I am using my vintage 15-91 Singer sewing machine which was built in 1951. This is my favorite sewing machine.

Here is my first finished placemat. I ended up using the dark purple batik because it was the only one I had enough of to do the binding on all four.

Bow Tie Quilted Placemats tutorial

I have another tutorial for an easy Bow Tied quilt block in a smaller size that you should take a look at. You’ll find large full-color photos showing the steps to make the block using the AccuQuilt GO! cutter.

Mr. Mickey is sitting in his favorite chair on the porch. We still have the small round table that we first bought for our kitchen. We were going to sell it but I put it out on the front porch and it makes a nice place to use my computer so we’ll be keeping it for a bit.

Last week was busy as we finally worked on our front porch. The yucky blue carpet was replaced with water-proof vinyl planks that match the tile in the rest of the house.

Then Builder Bob replaced the 1960 front door and storm door. It was a challenge as the old door was wood and had been shortened. Thank goodness Bob is good at this stuff!

Originally there was only the storm door on the front and then the wood door inside the porch. I wanted to have the porch open all of the time so we needed the insulated door on the front of the house. The trim all had to be replaced also. I love the extra space we now have!

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