Grandmother's Flower Garden Tablerunner

The grandmother's flower garden table runner made with 3/4" hexies is finished! I'm sharing this with you today because it is machine quilted, it doesn't qualify for slow stitching Sunday.

Most of you said you couldn't see the mistake I made when sewing the hexie flowers together. You can clearly see it here. The side edges are supposed to be even, not zag over every two blocks! It's not perfect but I'm using it anyway.

The finished tablerunner measures 35" by 57" and it fit the blanket chest just fine, no more scratched lid!

Machine quilting is not my thing but I wanted this project finished so I could start working on Hearts & Wreaths again. I decided to use this stencil for quilting and quilt vertically. I sketched lines where there weren't any, I thought it would make a nice crisscross design. I also decided to stitch in between these marks so the stitching would be approximately 1/2" apart. The straight line in the center would not be stitched. That was the plan anyway.

The inside of the curves were too sharp for my skill level. Since I do so little machine quilt, my curved lines had zags in them and weren't that smooth. Fortunately you can't see most of them since the darker colors of the hexies make them hard to see.

Quilting the way I originally planned meant there were 4 lines that needed to be stitched each pass, with the space of 1/2" in between them. It was taking forever and I really began to dislike this table runner! I decided to just quilt the outer design and it went faster. I made myself quilt for an hour a day, I was always glad when that hour was past. 😓 

I will admit though, my curves became smoother the more the quilting happened.

It was finally finished and quickly bound. 

When I laid it on the blanket chest, the borders stuck out straight because it was stiff, sigh 😞. So I washed it, the corners were better but not draping like I had wanted. I'm finished with this tablerunner though, it's done, I'm done and I'm moving on!

One thing I am pleased with though is the machine buttonhole stitching I used to attach the hexie center to the background fabric.

At this year's November Jane Stickle retreat, I want to work on the Dresden Stars that I started at the November 2022 retreat. If I can get them sewn into the stars, I plan to use the buttonhole stitch to attach them to the background fabric. This tablerunner was good practice and I was very happy with the stitching.

I used a spool of a brown variegated thread for the quilting and I am happy to say that I won at thread chicken! There was an 18" thread left on the spool after I was finished!! I didn't do so well at bobbin chicken but oh well, it's finished.

Muslin was used for the backing fabric. I didn't measure the runner after washing so I don't know if it shrank or not. Pieces of batting were used, not a whole piece.

Linking to To Do Tuesday, Midweek Makers, Wednesday Wait Loss, Needle & Thread Thursday, Put Your Foot Down