Valentine's Table Runner Quilt




Here's the quilt I've been working on this week. After months of not feeling like doing much of anything, I am now back to quilting with a vengeance! It feels good! Quilting is such a good distraction for the end of pregnancy! And boy am I gonna need a good distraction or two (or five) in the next few weeks!


I have never been much of a seasonal decorator so my house usually looks kinda bare. Lately though, I keep wanting to buy all this stuff to decorate for the different holidays! Let's blame it on my craft group. Yes, I have craft group...it's a group of girls that get together once a month and make some kind of decorative craft. It costs 10 bucks and we take turns hosting and coming up with the craft and getting all the supplies for it. Super fun! Here is this months little gem:


Ok, so usually my finished product looks different than everyone elses...it was supposed to be a dark wood stained background with a plain glitter heart...but I couldn't stay to work on it this month-I accidentally booked a Drs. appointment at the same time-so I just brought it home to make it. And then I got a little crazy with the paint and the silhouette cutter...yeah...I can't help it. Anyway...back to the quilt. So while on this little decorating spree, I realized that I didn't have any Valentine's quilts! So last weekend I spent some time designing a few quilts. I came up with two that I really liked, so I decided to make them both (just got the fabric for the 2nd one yesterday)!


If you're thinking you have seen something similar to this quilt, you are right! It is close to this quilt I made a couple years ago:


This is still one of my favorite quilts, so I decided to make this new quilt similar, but a table runner with hearts and swirls instead of circles and rings, and I changed the star a bit too. I couldn't resist using the same black and white polka dot for the stars and binding...I love it so much! I am going to cry when I finally run out of that Alexander Henry June Dot! All of the fabrics for the hearts came from my stash or scrap bags...good reminder of why I keep those scrap bags!


This quilt is completely raw edge appliqued...my favorite! The quilt top took me just a few hours to make...pretty fast! The quilting on the other hand...well it took me 3 days! And I am talking quilting-all-day days. No, I have not gotten slower...but I did get a new quilting machine a couple months ago, and let's just say there is a learning curve! The thing quilts all by itself (which I totally love) but if you don't know exactly how to make it do what you want, then it definitely takes forever. So I just kept reminding myself that this was a "learning quilt." And I am happy to report that by the end, I finally figured out how I could have made it take a few hours instead of a few days! And even though it took me forever...it was a really fun quilt to work on. I had way too much fun picking patterns to put inside the hearts! Here are a few close ups:


And I also whipped up a quick pattern in case anyone else needs some quilty and fast (if you don't take forever to quilt it) Valentine's Day decor! The PDF is available in my etsy shop or I have paper versions in my Ahhh...quilting Shop! Happy seasonal quilting!