Trip to scrapeville

For those who read my blog on a regular basis you already know that one of my favorite topics is using up scraps.   I started making Seminole border placemats this year with a blueberry theme for a shop up in Maine that sells my work.  I made 4 perfectly matched placemats and when I was in their shop recently, I noticed that they had sold one, leaving behind 3.  The owner, John said that customers were asking "where's the 4th one?"  Could I please make a 4th? He would then sell them as a set of 4..  Oh, oh I had used scraps and had used up ALL the blue fabric on those 4 mats and since this blue fabric had been kicking around awhile, there was no way to find this fabric for sale again so I told John I would make two matching pads that would look good with the ones he had in inventory and then be could put the two new ones with the old ones and sell them as a set of 4 leaving him with just one odd man out.  I made those last week and mailed them up to Maine.  Shortly there after, I got an email from John telling me he had someone who was staying at his B & B and not only did they buy the 3 matching hot pads but when the other two arrived, they purchased them also so, problems solved!   Now he was out of place mats completely, I needed to make more.  I dug through my scraps and since I had already decided that these mats WERE NOT going to match perfectly, I found a fat quarter of a nice green that went well with the blueberry fabric and then I found scraps of various and sundry purples and blues that were similar in tone.  No two will be exactly alike and as I make more of them, I will substitute a differently green here and there, the one thing they will all have in common is the blueberry fabric and the design.  I will call them my mix & match collection and the customers can mix and match whatever ones they like AND they can also purchases as many as they like, not forcing them into buying a set of four.  These mats have the dark blueberry print as a border around it but this uses up an enormous amount of fabric and I have very little of this fabric left PLUS, this fabric is out of print so the next batch I make, I may end up putting a different color as the border.  I do like this purple a lot!