Sad Story With a Happy Ending

My "Use Up Christmas Fabric" quest has been slow. Starts and stops and life - you know the drill.  I am determined to get my Christmas fabric into 1 bin (I will use the larger of the 2 bins). To that end, I've been working on placemats (haven't finished any) and a tablerunner.

The tablerunner ... that's where the sad story begins.

 GIFTS GALORE

a free pattern from Connecting Threads

It's a really cute and really easy tablerunner. 

I decided to use a shiny metallic thread to quilt. Using metallic thread on my Handiquilter takes a bit of patience but I've done it before.  A bit of bling on the quilt will be perfect.

Everything was going great at first.

Then this happened ...

and then ...

this happened ...

ROOKIE MISTAKE!!

The thread broke several times. I expected this. I adjusted the tension.  Metallic thread is a bit more sensitive than my go-to Glide or Omni threads.  Rethread and keep on going.

I lowered the tension - it looked great on top but I never checked the back. It wasn't great.

I didn't realize that the thread had jumped out of the tension disk. Even worse.

I finished the top, took it off the frame and as usual - flipped it over to look at the back.

I LOVE this fabric!

and growled at the terribly messy quilting.

Now what?

I did NOT want to pick out all that quilting. I considered throwing the whole thing in the trash.  

But it's such a cute runner and my goal of a 2018 handmade Christmas needed a good start.

Sew ...

I pieced together more fabric, added a 2nd back, sat down at my sewing machine and ditch stitched around and on the packages.

Problem solved.  The runner is quilted. The back fabric isn't as pretty but the quilting looks fabulous.

Now all it needs is a binding.

THE END