May 3, 2012

run away with me

Well, folks- this may be the most belated post ever. You've been warned... :)

Besides pillowcases, my quick fix when I'm jonesing to sew but am short on time is TABLE RUNNERS!!! Man oh man, are they fun to make! And sooooooooo much faster than a quilt. Lurve.
I made my first table runner at Halloween and it was about the simplest thing on the planet-
I took a charm pack of Halloween fabrics from Sewn, arranged them in coordinating colors in each row added a border and backing, did some quilting and BADA BING, BADA BOOM! I had a table runner for the month of October. :)
I loved how simple this table runner was because even though the fabrics were modern, keeping with just plain squares lent a primitive feel to the decor for Halloween. For my next holiday table runner though, I decided to get fancy. :)

My first stop, of course, was to Sewn where I bought a charm pack of Kate Spain's Flurry as well as some yardage for the backing and binding.
SOURCE: So Fun Fabrics
I decided that for this pattern I wanted to cut up each square and then piece the squares back together, using three different fabrics to make up each square. So, I played around with some different designs on paper and came up with this idea:
This is, quite obviously, not to scale in any way.

Out of each 5" charm pack square, I cut a rectangle 5" x 1.5" (rectangle in green pictured above). After cutting that rectangle, I had a piece of fabric represented by the blue and grey fabrics above. With that piece, I cut a rectangle measuring 3.5" x 1.5" which not only gave me that rectangle (featured in grey above) along with a square measuring 3.5" x 3.5", shown in blue above. I hope that makes sense. I am not one to follow someone else's patterns so if this sounds confusing, I GET IT! Ask me for clarification if you need it. :)
Don't you love that mitten print?!
After cutting each square into a large rectangle, a small rectangle and a square, I separated the fabric by both size and design.

Then comes the part that I both love and hate... arranging all of the fabrics and colors in a way that makes sense, isn't repetitive and is pretty. This part takes me forever!!! Does it for everybody else too? I arrange, rearrange and position the entire project together about 5,000 times before I settle on a design. Definitely worth the effort though. :)
After I figured out how I wanted each square to look, I matched up everything and put the fabric in a nice, organized pile. That way, I could easily pick up three pieces of fabric, sew them together and know they were going to look good.

After sewing each square together, I made rows of four squares across which gave me 10 rows total. I sewed those together and realized my table runner wasn't as big as I wanted it to be. DARN! That's what I get for not following a pattern. ;) Luckily there was still a bit more Flurry left at Sewn So I added a border to all four sides which made it exactly the size I wanted. :)
Ready for the big reveal?
TA-DA!!!
This table runner was lots of fun to make and made such a pretty focal point on the dining room table during the holiday season. Table runners and pillows are really about the fastest things you can make to change up the look of a room. Have you made any quick sewing projects lately to get your house ready for summer? :)

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