The end of winter is always hard - it's dark, it's cold, and everything is brown and grey. It really lifts my mood when the first bulbs break ground in the spring and color starts to come back. That means it is time to pack away the winter linens and break out the spring stuff - including a hot off the sewing machine table runner for my mom.
I was inspired by the many patchwork tulip quilts and table runners on Pinterest, including this Amsterdam Quilt by Bijou Lovely for Cloud 9 fabrics and Totally Tulips from the Missouri Star Quilt Co. (with insructional youtube video). I didn't actually use one of these patterns because I both like to do the patchwork math myself and I had a specific finished size to hit. Instead I sat down and figured out my own dimensions.
Each tulip block is 8" x 16" finished, so 6 of them - with some narrow sashing - makes the table runner 54" x 18". I left out the stem between the leaves, which makes the pattern pretty simple. The tulip is composed of two four-patch blocks - the flower is 4 flipped corner blocks and the leaves are 4 half-square triangle blocks.
The fabrics - in what I think of as jelly bean colors - are from Fabric Bubb. I felt that three main colors (plus the leaves) would be enough to get the patchwork look I wanted for the tulips. I stuck with small scale, primarily monochromatic prints - enough for visual interest, but not enough to overwhelm the patchwork design.
Once I got the fabrics, I cut out my blocks and worked on the layout for the tulip flowers. I wanted to make sure I had a good distribution of the colors across the table runner.
When I was happy with that, the patchwork cycle began. Chain piece, press, trim, and repeat! Eventually they started to look like tulips.
Once I had all the individual tulips pieced, I laid them out and played with sashing options.
And with that the top was done. Time to sandwich and quilt! I decided to hand quilt the runner - knew I wanted to hand embroider the stems, so it made sense to do the rest by hand as well. I chain stitched the stems and used a straight stitch everywhere else. Looking at it now, I wish I had used a chain stitch on the sashing to match the stems.
After I finished quilting the table runner, I trimmed it, pieced together some binding from leftover fabric and machine sewed it on. I normally like to finish binding by hand - I think it looks neater - but doing it by machine is definitely faster and I was on a bit of a deadline.
It fits perfectly in it's intended home on my mother's hutch!
I have some leftover fabrics that I will use to make myself a smaller version of the same design at some point.
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