4 blocks.

A better photo.
Quite fresh looking I think.

Sewing update.

I ordered some fabric on line- I bought a Fat Quarter on ebay and ordered 7 from The Laughing Hedgehog. I have spent quite a while recently looking at fabrics on line - looking for modern prints in reds, and I've been amazed at how difficult it has been to find some of the smaller fabric retailers - I stumble across them 4 days of searching on page 12 of googles results. Oh and how annoying some retailers search facilities are. Then I was off work on Thursday and Friday so I went to the Bramble Patch to get a few more. Blimey - how much fabric do I need to do a table runner - not this much!

So they're all washed and ironed and I've promptly jumped right in. I have almost pieced 4 stars.
Sorry it's such a bad photo - my camera is out of juice and I need to find the charger - this is from my phone camera.
Now I have to deliberate if I am happy with just the 4 stars, or if I need to add someting else.
I have the 4 stars in a row, and I am going to add a border. I wonder about placing smaller half stars at the edges.
It is this point that I wonder how precise my secret swap partner was in her size requirements - I said 10 by 40 - but an inch or two more wouldn't matter.

What fabric to use?

I am wondering what fabrics I should use for my Stars - I am doing Red on White, and I realise that if I'm not careful I could end up producing a traditional table runner instead of a modern one!
Help!

Plan C.

Tonight I have done half a star!

I thought I'd only do half so I would stand a chance of completing it so I could think about what I'll do for my swap. Sorry about the shadow in the top photo.

So here are the 3 ( 2 and a half) stars I've done so far.

I like "C", but realistically is it more than I've got the time for. I would need to do 4 of them. I like "B", the one at the bottom of the board. I'll think about putting a pieced square in the middle.
I'll have to do the vacuuming tomorrow as I've lots of little bits of thread, fabric and paper trailled throughout the house.

Modern Christmas Table Runner - practising!

All I will say is this isn't my partners ideal colour scheme.
Plan A is the 5 point star at the top - it's still not regular - it would be OK at an angle I guess.
Plan B is the big star underneath. I quite like that one, and it didn't take too long.

Tomorrow night I intend to start on plan C, and I need to think about fabric choices.

Off to bed now.

Starting the Modern Christmas Table Runner

The boys have gone to their dads' for 5 days. That's the arrangement we have - we have them for 5 days at a time. I know it's an odd number (true!), we felt a week was too long and any less time too short. 5 days is pretty good - one day is handover but then you have 4 days / evenings to catch up with the shopping, tidying, cleaning, occasional socialising ( v occasional). Then when you do have the boys you can concentrate on them. That's the ideal. Sometimes I don't achieve it as I fall asleep on the sofa, too tired from trying to do it all.

So today I had the whole day to myself. Not housework ( I loaded the dishwasher), or cleaning ( I swept the floor), or shopping ( I did nip out to pick up a rug I'd ordered). Yes, a whole day to myself. It almost turned into a whole day tidying as it took me most of the morning to find my sewing machine cable. I was beginning to panic. The last sewing I had done was in the living room but could I find it? In the end after looking in lots of other places I found it in a drawer in the same living room, tangled up with the wii controllers.

So, off to the sewing room. Last night I had decided to try piecing regular 5 pointed star. Unfortunately my attempt is not very regular, and I have unpicked some of it and will try to correct it. But I don't think it will work because of my seam placement - the star is one big triangle as the central pentagon and 2 points, and 3 small triangles attached. It draws the eye to any imperfection.

So, plan B.

I sorted through my books, magazines and a desk diary looking for inspiration.

Now I am having a go at 2 stars I found on the internet.

I can't go into too much detail re the colours I'll end up using, or the placement of the stars, if I end up using them as my swap recipient may be snooping.

Another annoying thing is that I had to draw the pattern for paper piecing one of the stars as the one I printed off wasn't quite the 4" it said it would be. So then I photocopied my sketch onto paper piecing paper and lo and behold - my photocopied sketch didn't measure 4"!!!. I have copied it on 101% as now it is nearly 4" so here's hoping any sewing inaccuracies will work in my favour.

I spent alot of last night reading my swap recipients blog and looking at flickr photos. What have I got myself into I wondered.

It was about 2 years ago that I signed up for my first swap. It was the Fall Mini Quilt swap so I think alot about Joan and Joans mini quilt alot as I drive past all the beautiful autumnal trees that I looked at 2 years ago, looking for inspiration. This is the mini quilt that I recieved from Anne.

Modern Christmas Table Runner Swap.

Yippee I've signed up to the Modern Christmas Table Runner swap.
I found our about it on Trudis' blog.

I joined at the 11th hour, and had to quickly put together a "mosaic" of images I like. Last night I was up fairly late learning how to do the mosaic so I have at least learnt something new.

I have posted this on my flickr page and you can see the details for these photos there - sorry but I haven't figured out how to paste the link details in here.