"Placemats" or "Practice Quilting"

I completed a set of four placemats for our table.  These were practice quilting pieces.  I started them in a machine quilting class I took from a great teacher in our guild.  (See earlier post here.)

I chose a wild, multi-colored fabric, which should be good for not showing stains!  I was hoping it would be forgiving with my free motion stitching, too.

I tried out lots of different quilting designs on these placemats and had a lot of fun with them.

Then I decided to try binding them completely by machine.  I've read of a couple different ways to do this.  I sewed the binding to the back, then folded it around to the front of the placemat.

Select stitch #4.

I used a wavy stitch, which is number four on my Bernina.

Here is what it looked like on the back.  I sewed very, very close to the edge of the binding.

And here it is on the front.  I assumed it was going to overlap my binding edge like that, and I'm ok with that.  The only problem I had was with some uneven stitching.  When the machine was taking the stitches on the binding itself it was fine.  But some of the stitches off of the binding, onto the other fabric, had large stitches, which means some were being skipped.  Maybe it was the unevenness of the levels of fabric.  But it seems to me like it should have been more consistent.  

I'll try machine binding again some day.  But I have a few issues to work out with it first!

But for now I have a new set of great placemats!  And some worthwhile practicing.