Wednesday, November 16, 2011

At last, a fall table runner!

Celebrate Color
First of all, I am linking this post up with Celebrate Color, so welcome anyone who is stopping by for Celebrate Color! I hope you'll stay for a bit! :)

As mentioned previously, I LOVE decorating for fall.  I don't understand why people are so quick to jump right to Christmas, when there's so much beauty in fall colors also.  Don't get me wrong, I love me some Christmas too... but something about the slower pace of fall, the cooler temps and beautiful colors lets me relax and unwind before the craziness of the holiday season begins.  With pumpkin spice latte in hand, I pulled out my box of decorations from last year at the first sign of cooling weather (and here in central Florida, that equates to a drop to about 87 degrees...) I have a hutch that holds all of our TV equipment that I usually have a table runner on which I change out for the seasons, and I could have sworn I had a fall one.  Apparently, I either lost it or I was hallucinating because it was no where to be found...oh well, that gave me an excuse to try my hand at some holiday crafting!  Now, I'm not much of a planner...I just like to find some fabric I like and go with it, but I had just bought an Accuquilt Go! Baby fabric cutter which came with some triangle and square dies, so I decided to try it out with my runner, making a few of these blocks:


I think this block is called a Saw Tooth Saw, I tried to google it but there are so many star blocks...who knows which one I actually made (actually...if anyone does, feel free to fill me in!), but I love it! Anyway, I had originally planned to make the star part with the patterned fabric, and solid as the background but somehow or another I didn't have enough fabric to do that, so it ended up being flip-flopped and I am glad that it did, I really like the way they turned out. 

I pieced together the back with some solid brown, solid orange and one of the patterns that did not make the cut for the front

Then it was time for the binding, which is where things really started to fall apart. My first attempt was TERRIBLE. I made some continuous bias tape (which as it turns out was completely unnecessary) at 1 inch thick (which, as it also turns out, was a really bad idea) Knowing that I couldn't get that on very straight with a stitch-in-the-ditch technique I decided to attach it using a decorative stitch to help hide my errors. Well that was an epic failure. There are many things that I could name as to why it went wrong, but what I ended up with were uneven stitches, the binding on the back not getting sewed with the front, and some sections came unfolded. I did the whole top until I realized just how bad it was. Frustrated, I decided to take a break from it for the time being...

A few days later, I think Rachel over at Stitched in Color must have known that I was struggling and posted this lovely tutorial on zig-zag binding. The idea behind this is kind of what I was going for, so this was exactly what I needed to help me try again, and get a decent result. If only I had a delorean and could read this tute BEFORE my ill-fated first attempt. There was no way I was going to attempt to rip out all those stitches, so I wound up just cutting off the parts of the binding that hadn't been stitched yet and just covering it all up with the new binding (shhhh don't tell anyone!) I was pretty bummed about how un-perfect this turned out, but considering this is the closest thing I've done to a quilt thus far, I guess I can blame it on the learning curve.

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I am pleased that I finally got this put together, and unless you know what's wrong with it or look too closely, it looks pretty darn cute on my TV hutch!
Table Runner 2
Fall table runner

Thanks again for stopping by, can't wait to see all the other projects being posted for Celebrate Color! I might also have another one ready soon, if I can get my act together!

3 comments:

  1. Oh man, you are making me want a pumpkin spice latte right now! I don't decorate my house for different seasons (other than a few Christmas things I put out). I am always envious of those houses that change with each season. I LOVE this runner! The star is really pretty and I love when your plan changes and in the end it turns out for the best, the white center star is really nice. If this is your first quilting experiment, you are so far along! You should be really proud of this. It looks like it came from an experienced quilter so you must be a natural! I am really enjoying your blog, so many beautiful things!

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  2. You are too kind, Sarah! Thanks so much for the encouragement! :)

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  3. Oh, I always like stars! Thanks for joining in with Celebrate Color!

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