Double Windmill Table Runner

So, in case you didn't know, I had twins! They arrived a tad early in mid-September. Towards the end of the pregnancy, I was increasingly sore and fatigued--imagine that! It was hard for me to do anything besides sit in bed all day. As you can imagine, I wasn't sewing much toward the end. I did a few things, here and there...sewing really is therapeutic for me. But, I just didn't have the stamina or strength to sew for more than a few minutes at a time.

After I delivered, I felt so much better and was itching to get back at the machine. And I realized that I had really made a mistake before delivering. I was determined to leave my sewing room in as good a shape as possible, and in my mind, that meant leaving as few WIPs as possible. What I didn't count on, though, was that without WIPs, I didn't have projects to jump right back into when I was ready. I did have a couple: my sampler project being a big one. I also had plans for a fall-colored version of Allison Harris's Shimmer quilt, but my progress on that was limited to picking fabric and sewing one practice block. I had nothing cut out. I had a Majestic Mountain mini quilt (designed by Amy Ellis) pieced and waiting to be quilted, but I couldn't get to the store to select thread (my sweet husband fixed that by buying me an Aurifil color card for my birthday).

I didn't have anything prepped to jump right into. Which proved to be a major bummer because I didn't have a ton of time to escape to my sewing room, I really only get 20 minutes or so at a time. One day, while flipping through some of my favorite quilt books, I came across a pattern in Vintage Quilt Revival that has been on my list for a long time. It's a cool table runner, but I've never been able to figure out what colors I wanted to use. Looking at it that day, though, I realized how great it would be as a Halloween table runner.

That afternoon, I auditioned some fabrics and printed the paper piecing pieces. The next day, I sewed the paper piecing together, and got the blocks sewn together the day after that. It went together so quickly, which is a huge benefit of sewing table runners! I elected to do wavy lines for the quilting, and that took a few days, but I had the table runner totally finished, including binding, just over a week after I started. I love the quick return on investment you get with mini quilts and table runners.

I really love how it turned out, even though there are few things I would have done differently. And it matches the Halloween banner I made last year. :-)