Easy No-Sew Burlap Placemats

Court hosted Thanksgiving this year in Pennsylvania and I wanted to bring a little hostess gift for her. I'm loving all things burlap these days, so I decided to make burlap place mats for her! (Sidenote: I also needed something quick, EASY & cheap - this project fit my requirements perfectly!). Our friend recently got married and she made burlap table runners for her tables. The centerpieces for the tables were an assortment of milk glass vases filled with flowers and vintage books stacked on top of each other. LOVE!

Anyway! I used this tutorial from the Nate Berkus show for my inspiration/guide, since I had never worked with burlap before.

What I used:

Burlap

Ruler

Pencil

Rotary Cutter

Stencil

Fabric paint

I cut my burlap pieces to 13 "x 20". (Nate used 12.5" for the height, but I like round numbers!) The rotary cutter worked great on the burlap, although it might have done a number on the blade...I'll probably have to replace that asap. Oh and burlap is messy - lots of little pieces & dust everywhere. I definitely needed to vacuum after this project!

(Those little burlap pieces show up everywhere! See it, to the right of the H?

I missed that when I was taking the pic!)

After all of the place mats were cut, I pulled about 4 to 5 threads with my fingers to fringe each side of the placemat. I kept going until I liked the width of the fringe. It's not supposed to be perfect or exact, but I trimmed the fridge on some of the sides to make it look more even.

I picked out an "H" stencil (for Court's last name) to use in the lower right hand of the place mat. Selfishly, I was excited about this stencil choice, because my last name also starts with H...and I thought that she might let me take home the extra place mats. ;) Court told me she was using fall covered berries for the napkin rings, so I decided on a wine-colored red for the stencil color.

Wouldn't a starfish or a an anchor stencil be precious for some summer place mats?!

And we even had sweet little place cards, courtesy of my niece, Bridget.

I think she's got the creative/crafty bug.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!