Table Runner Project

For my Mum for Christmas I decided to make her a quilted table runner for her newly decorated dining room.  She had previously told me that she was going for a turquoise and gold theme and she had wallpaper with leaf patterns on it in those colours.  I have since found out, after visiting at Christmas, that this wallpaper fell down and my parents have replaced it with TOTALLY DIFFERENT COLOURS.  Grrr!  So now it doesn't fit in the colour scheme but never mind, it is still pretty and they can always use it in a different room.

As you can see it is quite large, this was taken on my sofa (as my dining table is covered with the next sewing project!)  My parents have a larger than average dining table which I got my brother to measure so that I could get it the right size.  They could also use it on the sideboard as it fits there too, versatile no?

I used matching turquoise, gold, brown and a little red themed fat quarters that I actually won in a giveaway quite a while ago and they will match some coasters I made previously.

I bought the bias binding from ebay in a lovely vivid turquoise which I think goes really well and brightens the whole thing up.

The fabric for the back is another ebay find, a really gorgeous floral print in turquoise and gold which actually shines and shimmer in the light.

I found this tutorial for a runner on the website V and Co and although I didn't follow it exactly, it gave me a pretty good idea of where to start and what to do.  I used felt as the sandwich part of the runner and I stitched the strips on quilting through the bottom fabric.  I only did a few lines of quilting on top of the strips through the whole thing as I really liked how it looked and I was worried about getting my lines straight.  In fact the whole thing is not particularly straight but I hope this adds to the home-made-ness of it!  I haven't actually given it to my Mum yet as I hadn't added the binding by the time Christmas day came around (damn you retail job!) but I am planning on posting it, so hopefully by the time this post goes up she should have had it!