hello swing chicks it's Vanessa this video shows how to sort placemat with pleat and how to create the ripple effect as shown here read the About section below for fabric suggestions and cutting instructions okay so I have my piece of fabric with the 15 inch side facing facing me I'm going to take one of the side panels and pin them right sides together we're going to do this to the other side as well so take your panel and pin it to the other side of the the middle piece of fabric okay so i'm going to sew with a dark thread just just so that you can see what i'm doing but normally you want to use a threat that it's closer to the color of your fabric so i'm going to sew a quarter inch seam where we have pin the two pieces together okay and for my machine a quarter inch seam is the edge of my presser foot hear it on the edge of my fabric okay so you want to go ahead and do that to the other side of your fabric as well so here's the place mat with the two side panels song and we're going to turn it over and we're going to press the seams open I kind of use my my fingers to open this seems a little bit and then I press them open with the iron you already sure to press those as flat as possible and do those on and do this on both sides so now i have the placemat on its side and i have the one of the side panels where the edge is on my cutting board and i'm about to draw lines for the please so i start at the one inch line and i take my ruler put it on the one inch line and draw the line all the way across so you're going to keep doing this um one inch apart you're going to draw three lines three more lines one inch apart on each line so do this on once out of a panel and then turn the panel over sees me to the other side and just do it on the other panel as well so here's the close up of your lines you should have four lines on each side don't worry that this on this bottom line you won't have an inch between the swarf line and your scene here but the first and second second and third and third and fourth there should be one inches in between those so one thing when you fold the pleat tour you be sure that this pleat measures a quarter inch so just take your measuring tape or ruler or whatever and just make sure the the pleat measures a quarter of an inch that's really important to when we start to sew these down so i want to show you very quickly what the pleats look like that I've sewn on one side and just notice they're not perfect it perfect and that's okay really it's the uniqueness of a design that kind of gives it you know it's look so don't worry about your pleats being perfectly even straight or even you know consistent because it's how it's going to look when you put in the ripple effect and it's going to give it its own unique look so now let me show you how to do the pleats so I'm going to remove my pin here so we can so close to the edge of the fold the the outside edge of the fold is is a line with the inside edge of my presser foot because i want to so about an eighth inch seam I might be helpful to hold that hold as you sew and remove the pins as you go along okay so this is basically a first plate here and you're going to you're going to just continue making making those plate as I that I've shown before and continue sewing the same way until you get all 8 pleats I'm some so we're back at the cutting board and we're going to lay the placemat vertically on the cutting board and this time we're going to draw vertical lines three inches apart to make the ripples so I started a and in it three inches and then every three inches you should draw a vertical line and you're going to end up with for a total four vertical lines so to make the ripple effect you're going to sew on this vertical line but in the opposite directions of the way the pleats run so that they will stand up so here's the the pleated top with the ripple effect and you can now earn over your fabric mark lines while pressing up on the pleats now you're going to be ready to cut your backing piece and what you can do is just measure your front piece the sides one of the sides on the bottom so you'll know how much to cut for your back piece or you can use it as a template and put your back piece underneath and simply cut with your your ruler and your rotary cutter now you're going to place your back piece on top of your front piece right sides together because now we're going to sew all all the sides together aren't you going to leave about a 4-inch opening either at the top at the bottom or the top of the place mat so i simply just made a marking here and here just to remind myself that i need to leave this opening and so I'm going to sew from here all the way around back to this end and then just leave that opening so that I can turn this out so you can go ahead and just pin it to hold everything in place and then you're going to sew a half inch seam allowance all the way around so after you've sewn all four sides you want to cut the corners but be careful not to cut your scene this is just to remove that bulk from the corners and then you turn your place mat inside out so now you just want to press your place mat down and once you have it once you have it pressed you want to go ahead in either you can hand slip stitch the opening closed or you can machine sew across the top and across the bottom with a top stitch to complete the placemat and then you are done if you decide you want to miss machine stitch the openings clothes just simply so so an eighth of an inch seam from the top of the middle the middle piece to the bottom of the middle piece so you'll just in here before you get to the paletes and do the same on the other side of the placemat and then you're done just simply press just press the placemat after you're done