Quilted Halloween Table Runner

I bought this cute little Riley Blake "Trick or Treat" Fat Quarter set about a month or so ago.  I just love it!  (I bought the Christmas one too.)  So far, I have made a Halloween dress for my daughter and I have just finished my very first attempt at a quilted item.  (I plan on making a quilt for my daughter this winter, so I wanted to practice and start with something easy.)  I decided to make a quilted table runner for Halloween.

I have been doing a few fabric piecing projects lately to work on my skills, so that part wasn't hard.  (You can see those projects here, here and here.) I just kind of played with the fabrics until I found a combination that I liked.  I cut two strips each, varying the widths just a bit, from ten different fabrics.  Then just sewed them together.  Very easy.

I spent the next half day studying different online tutorials and You Tube videos to decide how I wanted to "quilt" and bind the table runner.  So, thank you to everyone who puts time and effort into these lessons, I know how much time they can take.  I didn't follow any one exact tutorial, I just watched and read over ten different tutorials and applied a little something from them all.

Rather than do any fancy quilting, I just decided to "stitch in the ditch" between the fabric strips.  While doing this method, I learned that I should probably do a little bit of a better job pressing the seams flat.  I think I will also pick up a walking foot before my next quilting project in hopes that it will help keep my stitches a little straighter.

I also decided to machine stitch my binding.  Lets face it, I am not making anything "heirloom" quality or trying to sell anything.  I just don't have the patience to do much hand stitching, especially on something as large as a full size quilt.

For this project, I used store bought bias tape.  Black was my chosen binding color anyway, so I didn't feel the need to make my own, especially since Hancock's had their packaged bias tape 50% off last weekend.  When I make my daughters quilt, I do plan to make the binding, though I haven't figured out if it needs to be on the bias or not...  (I already have the fabric picked out, bright pink with white pin-dots, so cute!)

If I have time, I would love to make a few more projects with this fabric.  Like these fabric pumpkins or fabric baskets.  We are running out of time before Halloween though and they may have to wait until next year...

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