M's and O's Placemats ~ You can eat off ‘em!

The M’s and O’s placemats are finished! I thought that I’d put on enough warp to do only eight placemats but I got lucky and was able to do an extra two placemats. As you can see there are a lot of placemats!
One of the bonuses for doing these placemats was the possibility to use up some of Mum’s stash. Below is a photo of all the weft’s I was using and the next photo has all the empty cones! I used two cones of soft twist linen, three tubes of natural cotton for my warp, and a tube each of gold chenille and a brown ramie. I also used most of the white boucle there is only a little tiny ball left.
Here they are packaged in pairs before being packed up to go to a sale. The placemats are very generous at 18x12 with a two inch fringe with each end hem stitched to secure the fringe. These are thick and a very nice size as they are easily able to hold a plate, cutlery and a water glass.
I enjoyed doing these placemats so much that I’ve put more on. I just tied onto the warp - which is a task that I hated; I think that it took me longer to tie on then if I had just pulled on a new warp. I hated tying all the overhand knots and it looked very messy to boot. I didn’t even take a picture because I loathed it so much!

The new placemats I’m working on are in various blues, I’m using several different shades of blue in cotton, a natural and a blue linen and for hints of colour I am using a blue linen that has bits of hot pink and yellow. The hints of colour really make the different shades of blue unified. As I am again using up the stash I have to pull the weft for two placemats at a time because I never really know how much yarn that I am going to have left and I want to have at least two matching placemats.
One thing that I am doing that I am really pleased with, is that I sit down and weave an entire placemat and do the hemstitching and before I leave the loom I set up the next placemat by doing the hemstitching and getting the shuttle ready. The next time I go to weave everything is done and ready for me; it is like having elves do the grunt work! I was taking some photos for this blog entry and Mum jokingly said that I should take a picture of the oven so people would know why she isn’t blogging! After running the self cleaning function she then spent over an hour detailing - it looks like new!