Placemats for Grandma

My Grandma has these really old worn out placemats that she uses all the time, so my sister and I decided that it was time for some new ones.  We tried to get them finished for Christmas but that just didn't happen since I was trying to get the quilt for my Mother-in-law finished.

I got one done for Christmas to give to Grandma, and the others have sat in my sewing room waiting to get basted, quilted and bound.  So when I saw Amy's One Week, One Thing Challenge I knew this was the project that needed to get completed.  But my days didn't exactly go as planned, so they didn't quite get all the way finished.  I decided that I would stay up as long as it took tonight to finish them just to have them done.  I wasn't going to make the deadline but at least it was enough motivation to get the Christmas gift done.  Then to go with the rest of my week I ran out of thread when I was finishing the binding on the 4th out of the six placemats.  So here are the finished 3 with the other 3 almost done.

Here's a close up of one.  My hubby thinks that it looks like a bunch of bamboo shots because of the color and the quilting.

Now somehow when I was peicing these I ended up sewing two of them backwards so they don't all match but it adds a little bit of character to them.

The Finished Product

 I forgot to take pictures on Christmas of the quilt for my mother-in-law, so last weekend when we went for a visit I was sure to snap a few photos.  You can kind of see the little notes on there from everyone in the family.  They were all so sweet.  Mom cried as she read each one, and said it was the sweetest gift she has ever received. That made all the work well worth it.

Sorry I can't get the picture to turn the right way, but here is a shot with the flags from the back.