Finish Up Friday

Last evening I finished hand-basting my Christmas Runner top to bottom.  I choose to do it by hand because I wanted the detail on the backing fabric to fall in the middle without shifting.  Today I will quilt it and add the binding by machine.  I just watched a video on YouTube; How To Bind a Quilt With a Sewing Machine -- Jenny Doan shows how to bind with a sewing machine. To get the materials needed to do this project.    She was very thorough and made it seem easy to do.  I will add pictures later today. 


 

This shows the pieced block I prepared to place in the middle of my backing fabric.

 

Well my Christmas Runner is done. I am not really happy about how The pictures turned out but I did want to show them to you anyway. 

My progress on my Christmas Table Runner

Here's the latest progress on my Table Runner. 

                                                                                                      These are the 8 segments I sewed & trimmed into blocks.

I took the scraps and made several 2" triangles

 

 I am finding that I enjoy hand quilting as much as my machine quilting and have applied the backing on with hand stitching.  Remember the Blocks I made - all 8 of them that I squared up for this runner.  I took the leftover triangles and made them into 2" squares.  Since the backing I choose for the runner needed piecing to fit I decded to cut it in half and make a block for the middle.  I took the squares and applied a short piece between each using my 2nd choice for the backing Then I used a 1 1/2" strip for the border on each.  This gave the appearance that they were floating - I like the effect.  Then I sewed the backing fabric to each side.  This made the backing wide enough to cover the top.  In order to keep the middle strip centered I decided to hand baste my backing to the top after sandwiching it between a low loft batting.  I will finish up the hand basting today and then continue to quilt and bind it.  above are pictures of my progress.  Hope you enjoy the creative process.