Red... the colour of passion. Violence. Lust. Love. Danger. Strength. Power. Red is also the theme for this months "Color It Red" blog hop, hosted by Carol of 'Just Let Me Quilt'. I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to make, but when I stood at my fabric shelf looking at the red prints, a few little orphan F8's caught my eye. They were originally part of a bigger bundle which I'd used years ago. Lucky for me, these remained. I chose a couple of those F8's and then a few other scrap strips which had a matching red "tone". At this point, my pile of fabric was all looking a little bit "too" red, so I thought I'd tone my selection down a little with some shades of grey/cream. Perfect! I made this Red Braid Table Runner and had such a fun time putting it together. I was so organised that I even had time to hand quilt it. It's nice when I don't leave things to the last minute and have the time to finish them as planned. Ahem... If you'd like to make a Red Braid Table Runner too, start with some assorted strips of red and grey print fabrics. The strips need to measure 2.5" x 8.5" - which is why a F8 is perfect or even a few jelly roll strips. From your low volume co-ordinating fabric, you will need a square measuring 9.5" as well as 2.5" squares. As a guess, I'd suggest starting with 18 red/grey strips and 9 low-volume 2.5" squares. You can always add more if you'd like your table runner to be longer. Divide the strips into two even piles and then sew a 2.5" square to the end of each rectangle from one pile. You will end up with one pile of pieced rectangles and one pile without. We'll call these the pieced and the non-pieced rectangle piles. Still with me? Good, okay, let's move on. Now, from that low-volume 9.5" square, cut it across on the diagonal. You have two half square triangles (HST) at this stage. Leave one of these HSTs as this will be the starting point of your project and cut the remaining HST in half again to yield 2 Quarter Square Triangles (QST). These will be used at the end of the table runner, so you can be put these aside for now. Now the real fun begins - assembling your table runner. Using the image (above) as a guide, place the HST on your work surface and chose a non-pieced rectangle. Sew it to the right side of the HST. Press. Sew a pieced rectangle so that it lines up with the edge of non-pieced rectangle. Press. Sew another non-pieced to the right side. Press. And another pieced to the left. Press. Continue doing this until you've reached your desired length of table runner. Remember those Quarter Square Triangles (QST) we put aside earlier? Let's now sew those to the end of the runner. Position them so that you end up with a nice flat (squared) edge. It was at this stage that I sandwiched my project with batting and backing, basted and then stitched in the ditch on the sewing machine. Once it's stitched down, it's time to trim those jagged edges. Measure 5.5" from the centre of the table runner (at the points of the white/low-volume squares) and trim. Flip the project over and repeat on the other side. You should now have a lovely, squared off Red Braid Table Runner. Add a little bit of extra hand quilting if you like, or just sew on the binding and display your new table runner. This has been such a fun project and I'd like to thank Carol for hosting this Color it Red blog hop. Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by