The Sew and Tell Project

Who doesn’t love a cute patriotic table runner this time of year? Better yet, I have a free pattern from our friends at Fat Quarter Shop to share with you today!

Would you like to add a pop of USA to your dining room table today?

Here are the supplies I used!

Wave Your Flag FREE Pattern from Fat Quarter Shop (available as a kit featuring Moda fabrics here).

NEW Everlasting Fabrics by Sharon Holland Designs. I used Flutter Buds (red), Crossed Paths (navy), and From the Heart (binding). I also used Pure Elements White Linen and Nature Elements in Blue Light both by Art Gallery Fabrics.

Cricut Maker (you can also use a regular rotary mat and cutter this pattern was very Design Space friendly so I put my Maker to use and had it cut out in no time!)

One thing you may not know about me is that I actually live very close to the Canadian border! Fun Fact: Most of my Wave Your Flag Table Runner was actually pieced in Canada. Little Babybel and I had a great weekend with sewing friends, an Airbnb, and goat cheese. She fell asleep to the sound of the machine so I couldn’t help but take this in progress shot to share with you!

The instructions provided by Fat Quarter Shop are very clear and straight forward. Because I’m often holding a sleepy, nursing baby on a Boppy pillow while I sew, I found a rotating cutting mat next to my machine, a Frixion pen, and a small Creative Grids ruler helpful for quick chain-piecing of my flying geese blocks. I used the small Creative Grids ruler for marking all the tiny white squares as well as trimming. I chain pieced the squares to one side of the rectangles, then cut, and pressed all of them open at once and repeated on the other side of my rectangle (or is it a goose?)

For my stripes units, I found that nesting my seams really helped me match my stripes accurately.

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I initially planned to join the sections of my runner using quilt-as-you-go. While my piecing skills have progressed, I have not spent much time practicing machine quilting on my Babylock Soprano. Since I was on a roll piecing in Canada, I went ahead and pieced the whole top to quilt when I returned. I thought about trying something more complicated but ended up stitching in the ditch around the flags and stars to give them a “puff” up. I then did a wide separated zig zag stitch using my walking foot in all of the aqua sections.

I decided to experiment with using Aurifil 12 wt in my needle to give it a big stitch look. I also handstitched my binding. The From the Heart print I chose looks like little fireworks going off to me 🙂

When I was all done, I gave the table runner a quick and gentle wash in my washing machine to give it a good quilty texture for photographs (and because my 5 year old got a bit of nail polish on it which THANKFULLY came out with my Oxi-Clean Max Force Gel stick! If I had a nickel for everytime that little stick saved me, I would buy more Oxi-Clean!

Thank you for joining me on this blog tour today!

You can head on over to the Jolly Jabber to watch the video and grab the free pattern.