Quilt 50: Gold/Red Christmas Table Runner

The leader of my "Tuesday Group" was involved with a fundraiser for a good cause. I decided to help out by donating a couple of Christmas table runners for them to use in their raffle.  Jacquie, one of the members of the group saw them and asked me if I'd whip one up for her. SURE! I'm always on the lookout for "quilt victims".

(click any picture to view a larger image)

In particular, she liked my red and gold one.  I have to admit that was my favorite, too!  So happily I went to my favorite fabric store - but was VERY disappointed not to find white/gold fabric that would go well with the red/gold (which I already had, and my friend really liked). However... I did find two "non-Christmas" prints which worked out nicely:

The bold poinsettia print is strong enough to carry the Christmas theme, thankfully!

When I made the previous three runners, I made an error when cropping the edges. I cropped right up to the point on the center block - WRONG!!!!  That flattened out the point when I put the binding on.  This time I was smarter - keeping that cropping 1/4 inch from the end of the point.

Jackie asked me if I could make the runner about 1.5 meters in length. SURE! But, you know what?!?!... I was using a 9" center square and 2.5" wide strips - and after I got out to the end, realized I'd have to go slightly under or slightly over.  Jackie chose "under" so it wouldn't come to close to the edge of her dining room table.

Here it is on the longarm, ready for quilting.

It got done in a BLINK!  I opted to free motion swirlies for this one, using gold thread (not metallic, just gold coloured).  Here's the finished runner:

Finished dimensions:  12" x 57"

And here's the back, where you can see the thread and my design.  I'm still not completely confident with my freemotion swirlies - but I'm getting better at it and have to admit that quilting the swirlies is SUPER FAST.  Maybe I'll get bold and do this pattern on one of my "Inspirational Quilts" projects.

So Jackie's got her Christmas table runner, and I had a ball putting it together for her.