Quilt 83 - Lil's Christmas Tablerunner - DONE!

Anybody with a lick of sense would just love my friend Lil.  She's a sparkly little Irish lass with a bit of the devil in her eye - loving and kind, thoughtful and just as refreshing as a spring breeze.

She asked me to make her a table runner at the start of the year - and was so very enthusiastic about the results that I knew I should do another.  With Christmas coming, I pounded my brain for what to give her and well... of course!  She'd seen a couple of runners I did last year and admired them, telling me exactly what she liked about each, and I just knew what to do.

So here we go - a square of fabric 9.5".  I have a "jelly roll" of Christmas prints, and cut the strips into quarters.  Below are 2 of the quarters lined up with the center square:

Now I take the other 2 quarters and stitch on a little square of the same fabric as the center block.  The strips, of course, are  2.5" wide, so the little square is cut to meet that.  I just kept adding strips and strips-with squares attached.  Easy as anything and fast as lightning. 

Bang!  And away we go.  I opted to back it with some unbleached homespun (muslin) and tacked together some leftover scraps of batting from other projects.

One thing that concerned me was making sure the whole thing would line up "plumb" on the machine.  So I lined up the center of the piece with the lines on the leader cloth - and dug in a pin to mark the point where the center was.  Each time I advanced the runner, I checked the center with this pin.

Here's the finished runner.

15" x 85" - cotton batting

Just plain loop-d-loops for the back - nothing fancy.  The quilting was done i n a flash.

 Lil and I met to have our little exchange day before y'day. - she was thrilled with the runner and promptly set it on her kitchen table, with her lovely white candles and white-berry centerpiece on top (why didn't I get a photo of it?!?!?). 

It was such an easy and quick project - hope you try one for yourself!

And Merry Christmas to you!