Sunday, October 4, 2009

Autumnal table runner

I coveted Wendy's autumn table runner from the beginning, and promptly forgot about it (ah, the many inspirations on the internet!).

"All of a sudden" I craved a quilted runner in autumnal colors, revising my original plan of appliquéing autumn leaves onto a solid background. Yesterday, when I was deep into piecing the runner (and realizing I might just lack the patience to do a lot of patchwork/quilting), I looked at Wendy's blog. All right. Now I remember!


A few notes on construction:

It's a very balanced runner regarding the fabric sources: the forest animal fabric and the brown dots are from fabric markets, the green dots and orange print bought on the internet, and the orange solid as well as the lining from IKEA!

I started with making a template for cutting out the animal motifs, and then framing them in strips of brown fabric. Parallel to this, I randomly sewed together strips of orange, orange print and green fabric, cutting apart and sewing together again and again, until I ran out of steam. I almost left the project there and then, not sure if the oranges would go with the animal patches, but I really wanted this finished today, as this is German Thanksgiving! So instead of continuing with the patching, I sewed the animal patches on top of the orange/green piece, and rather like the result.



I did not quilt it after all, just lined with white muslin fabric and bound the edges with self-made binding. I wanted the table runner to be rather thin so I could set the table without removing it.

German Unification day: We climbed one of the seven (small) mountains south of Bonn by the Rhine river. Here are some of the views:



It's been 20 years (almost) since the Berlin wall came down, and 19 years since the reunification. I, for one, am happy for the freedom the last 20 years have brought the German people, and many others. If the next 20 years could improve the political landscape as much...


Oh, and I don't say this nearly enough: Thank you for all your nice, supportive, cheering comments. They make my day! And thank you for reading.

3 comments:

  1. Oooh- so cute. :-) The little animal print is the most precious little print!

    I didn't know that there was a german thanksgiving- do you eat a lot of pumpkin pie for it, is that an american thing?? :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice quilt! You did a great job on it. Your photos are lovely also.

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  3. Very nice - great colours - how lovely to sit down at your table with YOUR table runner!

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