Happy Harvest Y'all

I think I've mentioned that I've been on a table runner kick.  I don't know why, but these small quilties just intrigue me these days.  They are fun to piece, they go together very quickly - even without the serger - I don't have to fight with them to quilt them by hand or on the machine, and I can finish them in a couple of hours, which makes me happy.

The other night, I blogged about taking my ugly prototype runner apart.  It just wasn't working.  It looked like this:

I just hated the gold leaf, and when I tried to make it stand out, I made it look REALLY ugly.  The center looked like this:

And when I took out the yarn, the needle had made such big holes, I ended up taking the whole center motif out.

This runner was my prototype, and I intended to give it away.  The Pensacola Quilter's Guild has a booth at the Arts Festival every year and they sell hand made items to raise money for some of their other charities, I think.  So anyway, it just wasn't up to par.


Tonight, I sat down to put the new center in.  I got the pattern from Kimara and Michelle at Wee Folk Art.  You can find it here.  I enlarged it a bit, and then appliqued it on the machine.  I have to admit that it was something of a challenge to replace the center when the rest was already quilted.   Here is the finished product (the center detail is at the top).

I think it is much improved.

On a side note, I think I have figured out the camera a bit.  It still doesn't have the flexibility of an SLR, but I'm finally beginning to get some detail in the shots.  Check out the tone-on-tone detail in the fabric in the photo at thte top of this post.  And, they are (mostly) in focus.  Again, much improved.