Handmade Home: One Hour Table Runner

After living in our little townhouse for a year and a half now, I'm finally getting around to adding more touches of "me" around the house (aka: getting rid of all his bachelor pad items and selling them on Craigslist). When shopping with his mom recently, I bought a few new pillows at Kohls (I had a gift card from Christmas) in shades of green to update the living room a bit. The addition of the new pillows did the trick, but something was still missing - the coffee table in front of the couch looked naked and screamed to be covered up with something colorful with a lot of pattern (my signature look for all things fabric).

So, I did what I always do - I went to Fabric.com and searched for the perfect matching fabric, and I found it in the new Ty Pennington line that included white, chartreuse and grey that would make the perfect table runner.



This weekend I went to visit Mom and brought my new fabric with me - as we always have time to sew and I knew she would get me started in the right direction to getting it done and not just continuing to sit in a pile on my cutting table - which happens a lot more than I would like to admit!

When I told her what I planned to do - she looked at me curiously for a minute but then we got to cutting. We cut a single piece for the top and for the bottom 17x46, plus strips for the binding.


I found a perfectly sized batting in her closet, pinned it together and she had it quilted in no time (yes, she quilted, I cut and pinned and ironed :)


Then I ironed the binding and we decided to do something different with "quick finish" in mind - we would put the binding on backwards and top stitch the top using a decorative feather stitch (rather than hand sewing the binding to the back).




Now onto what you are really interested in - the finished product in the living room with the new pillows - TA DA! Oh, and did I mention it took only ONE HOUR from the first cut to finished and on the coffee table?! Let me know what you think!