31 Days - Day 27: Little things mean a lot

Not all quilted projects are actual quilts. Wall hangings, table runners, candle mats, mini bags - the possibilities for quilty fun are endless.

For today, a trio of smaller quilted fun.

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This first table runner was made as a birthday present in 2001. The centers of the friendship squares are fussy cut from the border fabric. The border fabric, something I'd had in my stash, was the focal fabric for the runner, with all the other fabrics pulled from a color in the focus fabric. No pattern for this. The center blocks are 6 inches finished, I believe.

If you click on the picture, you can see the detail of the roses free motion quilted in the light blue triangles. The light yellow background is densely quilted in a meandering pattern. I can't quite make out the detail of the rest of the quilting, other than loops in the first border.

Grace's snowmen, 2005

The second small delight is a hexagonal candle mat. These are much, much easier to make than they look; I've made at least half a dozen of them, if not more. The center block is a traditional Ohio Star block. If you look closely and think about it a bit, you should be able to pick out the outline of the larger block of which the star is the center. Here's a hint: the corners of that larger block are large triangles in the snowflake fabric.

The border fabric on this one is a print of all sorts of snowmen.

Pam;s birthday - 2006

This next one is a favorite, and every time I visit Pam I threaten to walk off with it.

The runner is made entirely out of odd scraps of batiks I had in the stash. The colors are actually rather muddy - olive green, a greenish brown, muddied light blues and blue greens. But the addition of a little bit of true blue makes the whole thing pop.

You may have noticed that these blocks are also Ohio Star blocks, like the snowman candle mat center. But instead of having the traditional square-in-a-square center (the center blue square with the green corners in the candle mat), this one has a tiny patchwork. Those little squares finish at 1/2 inch. There are six of those teensy things across and over, for a total of 36 squares in each block center.

Thanks to some strip piecing, it wasn't as insane to piece as you might think. Still, it was a chore. But it's that kind of detail that makes this so much fun.

The blocks are quilted in the ditch. The surrounding triangles are densely meandered, while there is a running vine of leaves in the outer border.