Patio place mats

My mother-in-law (who is one of the big group of people whose birthdays we are celebrating this weekend) loves to entertain, and she loves to have the appropriate accessories for it.  I made her six of these Picnic Place Mats (from a great tutorial at Fabric Mutt) so she can set a beautiful table outside without the paper products blowing away.

I wanted to sew a division between the silverware and the plate (which was not in the original tutorial), but the mats ended up being narrower than they needed to be.  Either that, or I needed to buy smaller plates.  These really aren't very big, so I figured I had better play it safe and just let the plates, napkin, and silverware mingle.

I tried to get all creative to style the picture on our back patio, but my photo styling skills are a little lacking.

I had to include this redundant shot even thought the place mats got washed out by the sun, because I love that we have a view of a red barn from our back porch.  We live in a totally run-of-the-mill subdivision, but we back up to a great farm owned by a very nice family.