It's partly to add some decoration to our new bedroom, but the main aim is to try and protect my bright white duvet covers from the incessant moulting of our two black cats. Since they seem to think that anything left on the bed is intended for them to sleep on, my hope is that they will prefer to sleep on the darker runner, rather than the lighter duvet cover.
I started by sourcing green fabric (to go with the pale green walls in our bedroom), from a local craft shop and a jelly roll from Ebay. Next I cut the fabric into thin strips, 1.25" by 10".
The next job was to decide on the layout; the design is a random placement of a variety of patterned fabrics, but with an overall fade from lighter fabrics at the sides, with darker ones at the centre.
Once the placement was decided, the sewing began. Whilst adding each strip, I cut varying amounts off each strip, to add a little more randomness into the design.
Gradually the patchwork top of the runner became wider and wider, and slightly more unwieldy to work with, until finally, all 23 rows were sewn together.
After hours and hours of iron seams open, the patchwork top, batting and backing fabric were basted together using safety pins. And then the quilting began, breaking almost every rule I know: because of the pattern I've started at the edge rather than the middle, and because I'm: a) not very good at it, and b) I'm sewing curves, I'm quilting a stitch at a time instead of loading many stitches onto the needle.
I'm also doing it entirely as I go, without drawing out the pattern at all. It'll either be utterly awesome, or a complete mess which has to be completely unpicked. Only time (probably a lot, because when the quilting starts I slow down massively), and future updates will tell.
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