these are all attractive, but how do the fabric ones hold up to washing? personally, I feel that table linens have to be machine washable and need to be able to hold up to repeated washing.

I'm echoing Icg's thoughts here. These are all definitely interesting place mats, but not necessarily the best.

What about the fabulous chilewich ones?
www.chilewich.com/mats/index.html

I have some mats very similar to those tiki ones and they are *terrible*! Sure, they're pretty when there's an empty place setting on them, but if you spill some spaghetti off your plate, you get the placemat all dirty (and that's a hard shape to clean) and it goes right through onto the table as well. I much prefer my generic cotton rectangles.