Quilted Table Runner: Finished!

My last update on my table runner was photos of the three top blocks pieced. Well now only about a month later I’ve managed to finish the whole thing.

The one big problem I had (and it was big) was my attempt at basting. I bought pins, but they took two weeks to get here from Amazon prime which had never happened to me before but meant everything had to go on hold for a week and then when they got here, well, lets just say we didn’t get on.

I just couldn’t get all the layers to sit well. Putting the pins in only made the fabric scrunch up and get puckered. In the end I barely basted anything. I just did the quilting in a certain order to try to keep the fabric taut.

 

I started by using my walking foot fit the first time (after I’d figured out how to attach it) to stitch in the ditch (or out of the ditch in some places) around the presents and ribbons. Then I quilted straight lines around the outside of the blocks.

Once that was done and I didn’t have to worry about basting anymore, I got my free motion foot out. My machine teeth do not drop, it is, bless it, a very basic machine. But, it does come with a quilting plate that snaps into place over the teeth. I was worried I’d have to screw it in but it was very simple and sturdy.

 

I got a couple of scraps and made two small quilting sandwiches about the size of coasters to practice on. As I didn’t think going straight onto my table runner with my first ever attempt at free motion was the brightest idea. But I’m also impatient so after these two little experiments I moved back to my blocks and had a run at it. These are the backs and fronts as I wanted to see what the red thread would look like on both colours of fabric.

 

I’m pretty happy with how my quilting on the blocks turned out but, did I mention how impatient I am? No photos until the end I’m afraid. I used red thread front and back on all of them so on the middle block they are more subtle than on the green. Also it’s ridiculously hard to get good photos of quilting.

All three blocks were now finished and now I had to tackle the join as you go method I’d chosen. I decided to use green strips for the back so it wasn’t noticeable and red strips for the front to match the bias binding I was going to add as a border.

It was actually really simple (they are slightly wonky but that had more to do with me not squaring off the blocks very well which in turn was because the edges weren’t very neat because I hadn’t basted.)

So the moment you’ve all been waiting for…. And probably already seen from the featured photo but oh well.

Finished!

It’s a little bit easier to see the quilting on the back, just to prove I DID quilt the middle block because you can barely see it on the previous photo.

All in all it took about two months. To piece, baste, quilt, join and border three blocks. I’m pretty proud of that. They’re not perfect but I’ve learnt loads and feel I am ready to give my actual quilt a go. Eeek!

I’d need to cut, piece and quilt three blocks a month to realistically finish this quilt before the end of the year, which was my original goal, but that’s probably not going to happen so I’ll just take it as it comes because I really don’t want to rush this and mess it up. (although, I’m impatient so we’ll see how that goes!) I will be using fusible batting for my quilt though so hopefully that will help not make me want to kill the blocks and eliminate any need for additional basting methods. Is this realistic? Or am I still going to have to baste some?

Bloglovin / Twitter / Etsy / Goodreads / Ravelry