Country Lanes Table Runner

I chose the striped fabric - which allowed me to fussy cut the horses and utilize the shields from the alternating stripes in the four patch blocks.  I briefly considered fussy cutting the shields and determined that a. I wouldn't have enough fabric and b. I really don't like fussy cutting as much as recent projects might suggest...


Gus informed me that if the runner ended up in the snow, it was my fault.  I finished this last week, after deciding that it can either be an extremely long table runner or a good sized bed runner. I will use insulbrite as the batting in case the recipient chooses to use it on her table.  I had thought about using a few of the strips to make a square table topper to go along with the runner.  When I was choosing fabrics (all of which came out of my stash), I played around with the graph paper and color pencils to decide what to do in terms of color values.

The runner does feature more fussy cutting - the horses came from a striped fabric - and the patterned squares in the four patches are from the same fabric - the stripes in between the columns of horses.  The border and probably the backing will be the dark paisley which is used in the rail fence blocks.

Overall, I like the way this one turned out.  It did make me think carefully about stacking and laying out the stacks as this project probably involved the most ripping out that I've had to do yet - either blocks were misaligned or at the start, one block got separated from its pile when I moved them over, and I didn't catch on until the first three rows were sewn.  Good practice with the seam ripper...