Confession - A Christmas First

Yes, my dirty little secret is out...... I've never made Christmas decorations!  Shock, horror, gasp!  The closest I've gotten to making anything Christmas'y are my kids santa sacks - and they were very basic.  But it's ok, I've changed my ways - because on Saturday, I made a table runner!  A Christmas table runner!  Hoorah!

I bought some 1/4 yards of Hip Holiday a few months ago, because I wanted to attempt some Christmas goodies.  But what?  I started adding projects to my Pinterest board a while ago, but in the end, just made something up!  So here it is.....

Isn't she lovely?  So this is how I made it - I cut out a bunch of 4.5" squares, laid them all out on the floor, and worked out where I wanted my wonky star to be amongst it.  Once I had the layout sorted, I got to making the points for my wonky star, then popped them back in the layout (I use this tutorial if I ever need a refresher!).  I then got to sewing them all together in rows.  Once all the rows were done, I sewed all the rows together - Easy!  This took me probably all of an hour and a half to do!

Then came the really fun part - the quilting!  I sat and stared at the finished quilt top for a bit, trying to figure out how to quilt it.  I chose my go to Aurifil silver/grey #2605 in 50wt, whacked the walking foot on, and started straight lining it.  Basically straight down each and every seam - 1/4" out.  I went around the star also.

The walking foot came off, and the fmq foot went on!  I switched over to Aurifil #2024 - nice shimmery white.  I left the grey in my bobbin though - I don't do this often - don't ask me why!?  But because the backing on this was a plain white, I wanted to try letting the quilting really show.  I did some nice little swirls, which are almost the same as the swirls on silver in the fabric.

The back shows everything!

The other thing I tried for the FIRST TIME EVER - was burying my threads.  Now I had heard Gemma talking about burying threads before, but had no idea really what on earth it meant, but last week she explained it in her post HERE, and I thought "what the hell".  I was sick of worrying about my reverse stitch coming undone. So with nothing to lose, I started burying!  I LOVE the end result!  You can see on the photo of the back of this runner where I have reverse stitched before I started burying, no more reverse stitching for this little duck!!!!!  The burying of heads stitches was not half as tricky as I had imagined - quite simple really.  And it gives a far more professional end result.

So that my friends, is the latest in my quilting repertoire! Always learning, always learning.....

**This table runner is for sale over on my FB page HERE.

I'm linking up with I Quilt Linky Party & T.G.I.F.F. - OctoberQuest 2 - You can too!