Handmade Huck Placemats Make Family Meals Special

I love to sit around the table with my family and share a meal on huck placemats. Eating a meal that I've lovingly prepared with mats that I hand stitched makes it even more special. I think that handcraft on the table reminds them of the handcraft put into homemade food.

I know that I am always taking a risk with handmade placemats because of the proximity to food. Yes, my work is more vulnerable to spills and stains, but I'd rather have to redo a piece of Swedish weaving, which goes fairly quickly, than redo a delicate size 10 crochet thread placemat that seems to take forever!

If you decide to make a set of huck placemats, you can use huck cloth, huck toweling, or Stockholm.

• Huck cloth needs finishing on all sides. It's 14 count. You are free to make whatever shape you want. You choose whether the floats go vertically or horizontally.
• Huck toweling used as huck placemats only needs finishing at two ends to form easy rectangles, but the selvedge edges show and the loops will be going horizontally. It's also 14 count.
• Stockholm can come off a fabric bolt or already pre-finished. It's 7.5 count and has floats in both directions like monks cloth, so you have more design flexibility.

You can decorate the whole placemat, but doing each end will be a better use of your time since that's what shows on either side of the plate.