Who likes leftovers?

I'm not talking about food.  Although, this would be a good time to mention that my father will live forever because he regularly eats leftovers which are over a week old.  Maybe a week is giving him too much credit, actually.  The eternal risk taker does the "smell test" to determine the fate of his life almost every day.  If he throws out food, you know it was probably growing something which could not be scraped or cut off.  Yum.  But, I digress... 

In this blog post, I'm talking about finally using some of the heaps of leftover fabric I have in the basement.  (I should mention, however, that we played with my grandmother's seemingly endless bucket of remnant sewing pieces as a child.  She kept things forever...so it must be an inherited trait.)
I decided to use what was left of the two fabrics I have in our kitchen to make some placemats for the relatively informal dining room.  However...let me just say here that I believe you should be careful when reusing fabrics from one room to another.  I think the look can be annoyingly redundant.  BUT, since we were going from the kitchen to the dining room, it felt alright.  Plus, these placemats aren't permanent.  M'kay?

The geometric blue print was used on the roman shades in the kitchen and the bicycle print was used here to recover the bar stools.  They work well together in both color and texture.

I used my rotary cutter and self-healing cutting mat to get my fabric as straight as possible.  Um...I don't know if I was still humming from the night before or what...but the fabric in that picture doesn't look straight to me.  Just ignore that part. 
I wanted to add a little anthropologie-ish flair to these placemats, so I found some yellow jumbo sized ric-rac to border the edges.  Don't I have a cute assistant?

With right sides together, tuck the ric-rac to the inside of the fabrics and sew a 1/2" seam.  An important piece of advice: make sure you start sewing in the middle of the top or bottom edge.  You don't want to start on a corner because your ric-rac will not lay properly at the edges.  Leave an open space about 2-3" wide to turn the fabric right side out.  Make sure you clip your corners and press your hem before doing so.  This will give you crisp corners and edges.

After turning the fabric right side out, top stitch around the entire perimeter.  This will close your 2-3" opening and will give the placemats a clean and finished look. 

Here is another image of the finished project.  I am really happy with how they turned out.  They look fresh, fun, and summery in our dining room. 

The best part is, I've used them several times without having to machine wash them.  You know why?  I just flipped them over.  Bikes one day, geometric the next.  

Lazy?  Maybe.  Pretty and Smart?  Always.