Scrappy Spring Table Runner

 

I have this awesome bin of fabric scraps. I’m *that* person who can’t throw away something that might have a use some day… down the road… even though I don’t know when.

Typically the bin gets pulled out when I’m doing paper piecing. Often I’ll find the perfect pieces at just the right size, even if I have to root around for it first!

But the bin has been overflowing lately and it was time to tame the beast. I dedicated a couple of evenings one week to dutifully going through all the scraps, finding pieces that were big enough, pressing them with my iron, and cutting them out in to perfect little squares. I still didn’t have a plan for them. But I felt they might get better used this way.

It is finally spring here in Winnipeg (somewhat, we had a bit of a relapse into the cooler temps this week but I’m hopeful warmer weather is literally just around the corner).

So I decided to finally pull out those perfect little pile of scrappy bits and pull together a new table runner for my dining room.

This is one of those projects you can just kinda make up as you go!

I laid everything out and then sat back for a bit and made sure I was happy with the colours. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it, just placed the pieces in random order. But I did want to make sure I didn’t have duplicates or an unwilling pattern sneak up on me.

Using a quarter inch seam allowance, I pieced together the short rows first.

I’m always amazed how much you lose in length with that seam allowance. The math makes sense but it’s still always surprises me.

Then I pieced all the short rows together.

I decided to do just a white border around all four sides. My border ended up being 6 inches in width.

And of course, I stitched-in-the-ditch (SITD) all of the scrappy pieces using my walking foot on my Janome Skyline S7.

I’m a staunch SITD supporter. I always feel any other design you quilt really pops when you take your time and SITD. It also holds your batting in place which is particularly important when you are quilting larger pieces.

After playing with all those scrappy bits, I picked a binding fabric that would play off all those colours and frame the entire project. Call me crazy but I love creating my own binding and the whole process of sewing it on.

I’m super excited about this fresh new piece for the dining room.

What spring projects are you currently working on? Scrappy bits — save or toss? And what about stitch-in-the-ditch, yay or nay?