Making a good start with quilting-Placemats

I was nervous about getting back into quilting and I wanted to do a little project to make myself have some more confidence in it. So, I decided to work on 4 placemats for our little table. Not that it's usually anyone more than DH and I, but oh well. So I got some fabric picked out in the colors that we decided on: red, blue and yellow. As you know I painted the rooms a soft yellow.  I've been trying to add the blue and red through accent pieces. I have more red than blue at the moment. But we use Fiesta dish ware and we have the scarlet, lapis and (a discontinued) soft yellow.

This is the way that my table looked. Also a peek at the colors of my fiesta ware on the table. I like to mix the colors up like this. It makes dinnertime fun. Also, believe it or not, having beautiful dishes makes washing them that much more enjoyable. 

Now, I am making 4 placemats total. 

Here is the pieced parts of them. I have not yet bought the backing and cut our the binding. I'm going to a group of ladies that have been ever so helpful with my questions and I will be going there next week to bind my placemats and get started on my next project. Hopefully that will be a larger quilt. We will see how things go. 

 This is the colors and patterns that I chose. I was still cutting them out here in the top picture. The next one down I had cut them all out and decided how to sew them so they would mix and match. 

It's hard to imagine what they will look like exactly.

All 4 laid out to view the colors. YAY. Progress. 

This one was placed to check that this was what I wanted to do, then sewed up and I think they look nice. 

And here they are finished

I think they look really nice. I've pieced a quilt before, but I never did the batting, backing and binding. This was a fun project. It was supposed to be a small one, but it took much longer than anticipated because I hand bound them. I have several more projects in the works, but more on those later. 

Isn't quilting fun?

Have you made anything lately?