Thursday, January 21, 2021

Snowflake Table Runner

Welcome to my day of the Hearts on Fire blog hop, hosted by Carol of Just Let Me Quilt. I've showed several sneak peeks lately and now it's time for the big reveal of my heart themed Snowflake runner!

white heart themed snowflakes on a blue background for a table runner by QuiltFabrication

For years, I've wanted to make a runner of randomly placed and falling-off-the-edge snowflakes. But the mechanics of how to do that eluded me. Sure, I could cut paper patterns and trace them, but that didn't sound like fun.

Then, when the Hearts on Fire hop came up to use hearts, but with the stipulation that we couldn't use red, I had to think outside the box. It's then that things started to fall into place to finally realize my snowflake runner dream.

First, I started to play with the wreathmaker tool in EQ8. I made a few hearts, added extra elements to them, then adjusted everything with the wreathmaker tool to create my first snowflake.

Turns out, designing the snowflakes became addicting. Within a hour or so, I had four heart themed snowflakes designed in EQ8. That's all fine and good, but how do I get them easily to fabric?

Element two now comes into play to make all of this work. Enter Flexi-Fuse (affiliate link), a new-to-me fusible web.

I had ordered this several months ago, but hadn't tried it yet. Then it dawned on me - I could print my snowflake outlines, eliminating the tracing work. Sweet! Tomorrow, I'll review Flexi Fuse, sharing some pointers on using it.

Now, back to the snowflakes. All that was necessary was a suitable background fabric, a bit of random placement, and my snowflake runner becomes a reality.

snowflake appliques fused to a background

Though the snowflakes look complex, they're really quite simple. Looking closely, most of them cut out as one piece. Some are several pieces of easy shapes. My goal was to make them interesting but not complicated.

Printing, fusing, and cutting went smoothly, as did the applique stitching using invisible thread and a short, narrow zigzag in free motion mode or what I call freemotion applique.

What's freemotion applique? It's a faster way to stitch around an applique without all the turning, and the same technique I used on Gnome for the Holidays - check out the Freemotion Applique tutorial, or watch my Freemotion Applique in action on YouTube.

Once all the applique stitching was done, it was time for quilting. I chose a dense, echoed triangle fill for the background, plus outlining around the snowflakes.

dense echoed triangle fill around snowflakes

Notice there's no binding showing. I'll go over how I did that in a post next week. For now, enjoy a couple more closeups of those pretty heart-themed snowflakes.

closeup of four heart themed snowflakes on a table runner by QuiltFabrication

And the other end.

And I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! It came out better than I ever could have imagined.

A couple more things:

The Snowflake runner pattern is available in my Etsy shop. The pattern includes the 7 full size, printable snowflakes used on the runner, plus an eighth bonus snowflake.

And be sure to visit these other quilters today for their heart inspired creations.

January 21

Ms P Designs USA

Beaquilter

Becky’s Adventures in Quilting and Travel

Ridge Top Quilt

For The Love Of Geese

Sew Many Yarns

Quilting Gail

For the full Hearts on Fire blog hop list for the week, please visit Carol at Just Let Me Quilt.