The Finished Valentine’s Table Runner

Today, I am grounded. To my bed. Being 35.5 weeks pregnant with Babe #10 and having contractions all day yesterday, and overnight got me here.
So of course I am bored outta my mind.

Which makes this the perfect opportunity to share my little Valentine’s Table Runner with you all! The first one I made was on an impulse I had. There was a muslin quilt sandwich on the Lenni frame and I just began slapping patches down and stitching to experiment with piecing a quilt on the long arm. Within minutes, I had this:

It was awesome! Quilted as I went too. It took a little bit of playing around to get it right, but I was loving the results. Next I added some borders…

And then I thought it needed a little something else. So I cut out a bunch of wee hearts, and slapped those on top, and stitched them down…

In total, with very little forethought and zero planning, my wee quilt took two hours! I was totally hooked!

This also got my Matty pretty excited, and he quickly planned a live tutorial which we hosted two days later. I made the second one bigger, and used appliqué shapes cut with our Go cutter from the Rose of Sharon die. I tell you, when I’ve had this baby, I’ll be doing a lot more piecing projects on the long arm! It is so fast and easy!

We did record the making of the second runner, so if you are interested, you may view it here:
Two Hour Valentine’s Table Runner Tutorial.

This project could also be done by domestic machine, and I hope to whip up that tutorial soon as well. If you feel that you could whip it up sans directions (it IS super simple) here are the deets…

Finished Size 41X22 inches.

This project can be made scrappy. If you have lots of 2.5 or 5 inch strips, they can be used! I will show how to join them as we go.

Entire project, including attaching binding will be demonstrated on the longarm frame. Once we are finished you will only need to trim away excess batt and backing, then stitch binding to back.

Top
9 X (5 inch squares)
4 X (2.5 inch x wof) strips
2 X (5 inch x wof) strips

Appliqué
8 X (3 in squares)

Backing and batting
30+ in by 45 in

Binding
3 X (2.5 X WOF strips)

This is the second runner finished, (aside from stitching the binding that is)

Still on the frame:

All trimmed up:

Well that’s all for today… Would love to hear your thoughts on my cutesy wee runners! 🙂 time for this lil Mama to have a snooze, all this laying around is making me tired! LOL

Quilty Hugs,
Bradie

Two Hour Valentine’s Runner Tutorial Announcement – Today!

Hi all!
Just a quick little post to announce I will be having a live tutorial about how to piece a quilt on a longarm today.

This is my Two Hour Valentine’s Table Runner. I will broadcast live at 11am PST with a tutorial on how to make it. (of course this can also be done with your domestic machine as well!) I hope you will tune in to watch and learn!
Here is where you can find us…
http://ustream.tv/channel/long-arm-quilting
See you there!

Quilty Hugs,
Bradie

PS. While you are here be sure to enter my Accuquilt GO cutter giveaway below… Good luck!

Homemade Crafts for Valentine’s Day

Hello my friends!

It seems as though another special day is coming up quickly, one of our family favorites… Valentines Day! This is bound to bring out anyone’s creative side, from writing funny Valentine poems to crafting homemade Valentine cards. I sense a flurry of red, pink, and white crafts involving fabric, paint, cardstock, sticky glue and sparkles in our future.

What are your favorite crafts for valentine’s Day? I’ve been browsing the web for inspiration and luckily, stumbled across Sweetwater. Shocking huh? I love browsing their Make Life Sweet blog, they are fabulous with words and graphic design. Only Sweetwater could make handmade cards featuring valentines day quotes this awesome. These little beauties use the best valentines quotes to make a sweet Valentine’s pillow for a gift. I picture these wee Valentine treat bags stuffed with cinnamon hearts.So be sure to visit their etsy shop, where they sell all kinds of gorgeous crafty kits.

Here’s another place to find some Valentine’s inspiration! Vicki at Spun Sugar Quilts hosted a Be Mine Blog Tour with a series of Valentine’s project tutorials. The tour is now over, but you still have time to whip up a Valentine’s placemat, banner, or what ever else catches your eye!

Have fun crafting for Valentine’s, I know we sure will! Hopefully by the end of the week, I will have some Valentine’s craftiness photos to share. 🙂 Hugs! Bradie