Stitching Placemats with the BERNINA Walking Foot

The BERNINA Walking Foot #50: Magic Quilting Foot

Guest post by Katherine Nichols

Hello, Artistic Friends! In January Barbara and I teamed up for a Facebook Live presentation, talking about and demonstrating the BERNINA Three-Sole Walking Foot #50, which was the Accessory of the Month. We shared information on the foot and all its features as well as how to use the different soles with practical applications. If you weren’t able to join us live, visit our YouTube channel for our archived presentation.

With this post, I will ‘walk’ you through the steps to make the placemats I talked about during the Facebook Live presentation.

As I mentioned in the video, I saw a photo in a magazine of a placemat using block printed fabric with a striped binding. Artistic Artifacts has a large selection of Indian block printed fabrics to choose from, as well as Marcia Derse’s ‘Line’ fabrics which come in several colors. Like many sewists, when I see a commercial item I like, I often say “I can make that!” As as pictured above, I did!

To make my own placemats, I cut the fabric 12 in. x 17 in. to fit well on my table and allow space for a place setting. I like to use two layers of flannel rather than batting for placemats. Using flannel or batting is a personal choice; personally I like the flatter look of the flannel.

I cut four layers (the front fabric, two layers of flannel, and the backing fabric) for each placemat.

Because I was working with four layers, using the walking foot meant I would achieve consistent stitches without the layers shifting or skewing.

After putting the fabrics together, I used my Clover Hera Marking Tool to press an initial sewing line down the center of the placemat.

I attached my #50 walking foot to my BERNINA 570 with the left seam guide set at 1-inch. Using the seam guide is a great way to get evenly spaced sewing lines without having to mark every line.

I first positioned the seam guide to follow the line made by the Hera marker (pictured below left), and then used the seam guide to sew the remaining quilting lines. By aligning the stitch guide with my previous lines of stitching all of my quilting lines were evenly spaced.

As pictured above right, you can see that I am using stitch #1 and I lengthened the stitch length to 3.0 for the quilting lines. I like to test stitch a scrap of my fabric sandwich to determine the stitch length that gives me the look I want. I kept all other settings in their default positions.

Once I finished quilting, I added binding. I like a tight binding, so I cut mine 2.25 in. wide, ironed it in half, wrong sides together, and aligned the raw edges of the binding with the raw edge of the placement and stitch. I shortened the stitch length to 2.5 to sew on the binding.

After the binding was attached, I ironed the binding away from the placemat (pictured above, left) to help it lay flat using my Oliso M3Pro Project Iron. It’s so handy to keep this small iron and a wool pressing mat near my sewing area! After pressing the binding away from the stitching, I turned the placemat over, folded the binding, and ironing it flat to cover the stitching line (above right).

I wanted to ensure the binding stayed flat and in place so once I ironed the folded binding, I used my Aleene's Original Tacky Glue Pen to secure the binding to the back (above left). I then secured the glued binding with mini Clover Wonder Clips and let my project sit overnight to dry thoroughly.

Since I plan to wash the placemats frequently, I chose to machine stitch the binding to the back. I attached the edgestitch sole to the walking foot so that I could easily guide the foot along the binding from the front side. Above left, you can see the edgestitch guide aligned with fold of the binding. Above right, not note that I moved the needle position 4 clicks to the right so I could follow the edge of the binding while stitching (with a 2.5 stitch length). It was easy to quickly complete the edge stitching around all edges of the binding to finish.

Voilà! I hope you try making some placemats of your own!