Back in.. April? May? I received an envelope with six Michael Miller Petal Pinwheels fat eighths courtesy of the Modern Quilt Guild. I had loads of time to think of something to do with them, so I mulled it over as I watched challenge projects pop up in my blog reader and on Instagram. The day before the deadline I decided that maybe it was time to do something about it.

A few things that had held me back to this point. The first is that I’m not particularly creative; I copy well, but don’t often come up with my own quilting ideas, and I couldn’t think of what to make. Secondly, the fabric was cute enough, but I was mostly ambivalent about it. While other participants went out and bought more Michael Miller fabric to make a bigger project, I didn’t want to, because, as I may have mentioned three million times, fabric in Germany is really expensive, and because I didn’t feel like spending money on fabric I didn’t absolutely love. Thirdly, one of the fat eighths was a reddish-orange solid, and the challenge rules were that only other Michael Miller fabrics could be used, or alternatively, other solids. Have I mentioned that I hate solids? Hate solids. But the deadline was looming and my local quilt shop was having a sale, so I popped in and in addition to buying lovely, but completely unhelpful fabrics for this cause, I also bought a meter of Kona Snow (and hi, can I just say that I really don’t see why everyone is so gaga about what is essentially a white sheet?).

I’ve had this picture on my phone for yonks and a half; something I saw on Pinterest at some point and saved for future reference, and I decided to try something similar. Given the limited fabric at my disposal, I went for a table runner.

I think it was a picture of a carpet, maybe?

I vaguely relied on a method Jacqui Gering demonstrates in her Improvisational Piecing, Modern Design class on Craftsy* (affiliate link, see disclaimer below) to piece the angled strips, which mostly worked, though I did need to unstitch a couple of the strips and try again.

Finished table runner top

For the back, I pieced together the leftover challenge fabrics and bookended them with what little of the Kona Snow was left.

Finished table runner back

For the quilting, I quilted each section separately using a matching thread (mostly Aurifil), with straight lines echoing the shapes the strips formed. I didn’t have quite enough of the white for the binding, so I cheated a little and used the sashing fabric I used in my Dreamweaver quilt, which reads white. Speaking of binding, thank you to everyone who offered thoughts and suggestions regarding the binding question in my blog hop post. I haven’t replied to everyone yet, mostly because I suck. The overwhelming consensus was that no matter how tedious, nothing produces better results than hand binding, and well. Is this not awful?

It’s awful.

Kiwi was giving me the stank eye as I was doing it. SHE KNEW. I give up on machine binding.

Are you sure about that?

That said, the weekend after the challenge closed, the Germ and I drove down to the northern foothills of the Alps, just across the border into Austria. He’s training for a race around Mont Blanc (possibly I failed to mention that the Germ is as mad as a hatter) and needed to do some running in the mountains, so he set off early on Saturday morning and I met him halfway and then at the end of his route. There are worse places I could have been hanging out while unstitching the binding, right?

So dreamy

I’ve now finished re-binding (by hand, which I have to admit was not really that awful considering, you know, the alternative) and I am pleased with how this turned out. Sheleg helped.

Some feline snow on Kona snow action (Sheleg=snow in Hebrew)

She seems to spend half her day on top of it, so I guess I’ve passed her QA.

Yeah, s’alright. You got food?

* An affiliate link means that I may get a commissions if you decide to purchase anything from the company I linked to, in this case Craftsy.com. I only recommend products and services that I use and love, so I know you’ll be in good hands.