Easy DIY Fabric Placemats: Sewing Project Tutorial

By Lauren Rose Correa, January 11, 2025

I love creating unique tablescapes, and these easy DIY fabric placemats are perfect for my Valentine’s Day table! They came together in about two hours for six of them. I opted for a red toile on one side and a floral pattern on the other, and I love how they turned out.

While these are gorgeous, I recommend you make yours using an easy to clean cotton or linen fabric. I thrifted this fabric, and I’m pretty sure it’s upholstery fabric. I’m not sure how well it will hold up in the washing machine. I don’t really mind it though, because I’m will be using these occasionally for eating with my husband and close friends. They need to be spot cleaned.

I took a few shortcuts to keep this project beginner friendly. First, I bought bias tape instead of cutting and sewing my own trim. Then, instead of just sewing everything together, I used a spray adhesive to attach the fabric layers to each other. The spray adhesive does two things: it makes your placemat feel thicker and less floppy, and it makes it much easier to sew all the pieces together. Pinning the bias tape on would have been much harder if the layers weren’t secured together already.

Easy DIY Fabric Placemats – Let’s Get Started!

Follow these instructions to create DIY fabric placemats! This is a beginner friendly project, but I wrote these instructions assuming that you already know the basics of threading and using your sewing machine. If you need help with those basics, I recommend finding a tutorial for your specific machine.

Supplies

½ Inch Double Fold Bias Tape (one pack for every two placemats)
Thread (color should match the bias tape)
Cotton or Linen Fabric (two coordinating patterns that both match your bias tape and thread)
Gorilla Heavy Duty Spray Adhesive
Sewing Scissors
Pushpins
Sewing Machine
Circle Template (I used a hatbox lid, but you could use a charger or a cheap circular placemat in the size you want)

Directions for Easy DIY Fabric Placemats

Start with a circle template in the size you want your placemats to be. I used the lid of a hatbox. You could use a large plate charger, a cheap placemat, or make something even bigger using a piece of cardboard or thick paper. My placemats ended up being 14” in diameter. This is a bit small, but it’s the size I wanted for my small kitchen table. I recommend doing about 15” or 16” in diameter.

Using the circle template, cut your fabric into circles. I cut twelve circles total, half in one red toile pattern and half in another coordinating floral pattern, to make six placemats.

Once you have your circles, you’ll want to glue them together, back sides of the fabric facing together, with your spray adhesive. I followed the instructions on the spray adhesive and sprayed the backs of each piece of fabric, then let them sit for one minute. After 60 seconds had passed, I slowly and carefully stuck the glued sides of the fabric together and smoothed them out. I did this slowly, one placemat at a time, until I had six placemats with one toile side and one floral side.

Once your placemats are glued together, grab your sewing scissors and trim off any places where you see excess fabric.

Unwrap your bias tape and start carefully folding it over the edge of your placemats, pinning it to place. Take your time doing this to ensure that you pin everything evenly and smoothly.

Once your bias tape is pinned in place, it’s time to sew! Thread your sewing machine with your matching thread. My settings on my sewing machine were as follows: tension at 3, needle position to the left, width set between 3 and 4, and stitch length at 3.

I typically test drive my machine on a few scraps of fabric to make sure I like the way it’s stitching. Carefully start sewing along the inner edge of the bias tape, guiding your placemat slowly. I backstitched at the beginning and end of sewing to ensure that nothing comes unstitched.