With all that said, yes, I have been experimenting with place mats.
This set was designed by AJ (who says he can't design and always gives me great ideas), and which I wanted to try as I'd never done this kind of thing before: Pieces appliqued onto other appliqued pieces.
Here they are:
One on its own:
And the whole batch:
The quilting is of concentric outlines of the overlapping circles. I figured with no piecing really, I could get away with less quilting. And it shows up as a neat design on the back.
The backing is of cherries, because I always associate cherries with kitchen stuff and because I had a length of it in my stash:
Hmm...can't really see the cherries. Here they are:
I enjoyed the applique (and learned that it eats up a LOT of thread!), and working with colors I would not usually pick.
But hey, it's a small project!