When I was a kid, we had plastic placemats that we used every day on the antique kitchen table. Far from being a fashion statement, the placemats were one of many tools in our education. Want to know your birth stone? Find the placemat about gems and stones. Learning about presidents? There was a placemat for that too. Wondering about the muscular system? Or perhaps the respiratory system? Anatomy on a placemat was your friend.
Those placemats were more than a way to protect the table from messy kids. They were a conversation starter of endless questions and stories. To this day I remember what they looked like and some of what I learned.
And of course, I remember the pretty ones too.
The ones that came out on special occasions and felt so fancy. The colors were vibrant and the cotton felt so soft. I can still remember the texture between my fingers. Perhaps you remember a special tablecloth or placemat from your childhood too. Or maybe you saw a table setting once that has stuck with you to this day. Perhaps you remember a placemat because of the great conversation or the great food.
I hope that the placemats from our Nature Collection are all of that and more. A beautiful conversation starter made by real hands with real mud, real fibers and real dyes. They might not have the periodic table on them, but they have the story of tree leaves falling in a breeze, of fire shaped flowers blooming in the summer sun, and of busy hands carefully stitching to the tune of desert birds outside the studio window.
The printed and plain cotton is cut to size and a sturdy piece of wool felt is stitched between in kanta-like rows (machine stitched this time!). The raw edges of cotton were carefully folded under and in, snugly around the felt, and then the final touch: each placemat is finished with a variation of the blanket stitch along the edge. Not only is the stitch beautiful but it’s the final piece to the puzzle, the final stitch holding three layers together in a tidy line.
The wool felt used in these placemats is the same as in our felt pillow covers and this felt art piece, coming straight from Rajasthani sheep in this amazing process of felt creation. The prints are from our Nature Collection, paying tribute to three of our favorite trees in and around Udaipur. Each stitch is done by hand in our studio, recalling all the feels of our kanta stitched quilts.
The story of these placemats is made up of each fiber of wool, each mud resist print and each hand stitched thread. The story of nature, people and places, all woven together for your table.
Bye for now!
-Sarah
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