Sometimes you just have to walk away...

Have you ever worked on a quilting/sewing/crafting project for hours and hours only to get it to a point where you step back and hate the way it's turning out?  That happened to me last week.  I'd spent two solid days sewing on a project and when I got about two thirds of the way through, I decided it was not what I wanted.  All that work!  Ug.  I left my sewing room on Friday and let things lie over the weekend.  Monday morning, I went back in and had a go at transforming some of the bits into something new.  And I got 4 great placemats out of it! 

Yup, still working on the Fruitcake fat quarter bundle.  How do I still have some left??

I'd spent quite a bit of time sewing together 2.5" squares for the original project - 8 pieces, each 2 squares by 12 squares.  This is the part that I reused for the placemats - as scrappy binding!  I didn't want to spend the time taking apart all the squares for something else, so I cut them in half down either side of the long seam, and used it as a 2" binding.

old project

new project!

I put the trees together using leftover strips from the pillow and quilt projects and raw-edge appliqued them onto the background fabric. 

This was also my first attempt at a wavy line quilting pattern.  I like it.  It was easy and fast and it doesn't matter if your lines are perfect!  My mitered corners are even getting better with each one of these placemats.  Small projects are great for honing techniques.

I still have the main pieces of the old project to do something with eventually, but I feel like I've redeemed myself after last week's failure.  At least now I can move on to other sewing projects!  I hope your projects are all going smoothly as the holidays continue!