Continuing my Twelve Gifts of Christmas theme, I present the third handmade gift of Christmas - placemats for best buddy, Shannon.

This Alexander Henry fabric reminded me of Shannon, who loves brown and has lots of lovely, lovely brown linens in her house. I only see Shannon in pictures these days since she moved away from Boston, and most of the pictures are of her darling girl on her brown and blue patterned playmat. This fabric looked like it would be right at home there near that playmat, and a little homemade something from me is as close as I can get to being there myself.

This fabric has a wonderful graphic pattern of squares, which I quilted over. Then I added the binding using the same chocolate brown fabric that's on the back. I opted for machine-applied binding (as described in Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts) because they're not really heirloom quilts (heck, they're for eating off of!) and I wanted to finish them this year (I'm still pretty slow with the hand-sewn binding). I made two regular sized placemats and one small one for her little girl. Awwww.

Sing it with me... the third gift of Christmas my crafter gave to me: three patterned placemats, two (well, four) foodie placemats, and a picture frame and a pair of booties!