“Secret” Ingredient!

Hello my friends and welcome to my first Blog post of 2025! This whole year seems to have flown by, it’s kind of hard to believe that we’re already in 2025! Somehow I thought that time would slow down as I aged…but that isn’t the case at all! I’m just going to lean into the saying, “time flies when you’re having fun” lol!

Ok so you may remember that my friend Nancy had asked me to make her a few things before Christmas and I think the only one I haven’t really told you about yet is the festive table runner she asked for!

Instead of me picking out the fabric and hoping she’d like it, I passed that task on to her! She and her daughter came up with 2 and she couldn’t decide which one she should choose but then I suggested a reversible runner so we could use both of them! Nancy loves snowmen so I wasn’t surprised at all by her choice of the super cute Black Snowmies, and Claire’s choice of Jingle All the Way Plaid was a great one too!

With the fabrics chosen I was all set to go, but first I had a few decisions to make:

1. What size to make the runner?
2. What batting/interfacing to use in between cottons?
3. To quilt or not to quilt…that was the question!
4. Did I have a suitable fabric in my stash to use as binding, one that would be a complimentary colour/print to both cottons?
5. Squared off ends or curved?

Answers:

1. Nancy wanted the length to be 68″ long so I could have purchased 2 yards of fabric which would give me 72″ but I would have had so much leftover fabric. Instead I purchased one yard, cut it in half so I ended up with 2 pieces that were 18″x44″. I then joined them in the middle, working very hard at getting them to match so well that you can barely see that join! Once I did that, I had a piece that was approximately 18″x80″ (you lose some inches when you’re trying to find the matching pattern to make your join at). Now for the width, I did some researching to see if there was a “normal/typical” width and as you may have guessed, there really wasn’t! It ranged from 12″-18″, obviously depending on the width of your table. I knew their table wasn’t an extra wide one so I was thinking that I’d start by cutting my long piece down from 18″ to 16″ and see how that looked. It still seemed much too wide so I took off a bit more, then a bit more and finally I felt satisfied with it at 13″ wide!
2. Ahhh….batting, and here’s where my SECRET INGREDIENT comes in lol! Now I assumed I’d probably just use my go-to fleece of Pellon 971F Thermolam but as I was cutting Zorb for an order at work one day, it occurred to me that perhaps this was the product I should be using in a table runner…especially for someone who has young grandchildren that come to visit and I’m assuming there might be the odd spill of liquids on the table!!!! “Zorb absorbs 10 times its weight in under 2 seconds and soaks up 20 times faster than other materials (bamboo, cotton, hemp knits)”….omg, this is absolutely for a table runner/placemats! Did I just discover a new use for this fabric lol? Probably not, there’s probably tons of you out there that are saying in unison, “duh” lol!! Oh well, I was very pleased with myself at “my” discovery! Another bonus to this fabric is that it is thicker than any fleece I would have used in there and I love when the batting/interfacing has some “oomph” to it! Oh yes, I should also add that I used the 60″ Zorb but again, trying not to buy more than I needed, I purchased a 1/2 yard of it and then just added 2 layers of scrap Thermolam to one end to give me enough batting for the 68″ required length. I do this by ironing a strip of SF101 where I’m joining the batting, it acts like a glue and adheres the pieces together! It’s a little Frankenstein looking but once it’s covered with the material, no one can tell!
3. While I do love the look of quilting, and I love actually doing the quilting, I ultimately decided to not do any because I didn’t want to take away from either of the prints!
4. Since I’ve discovered that I quite enjoy doing binding on projects, I was looking forward to doing that on here, and was also hopeful that I’d find a fabric in my stash that would be a suitable colour and print for both of the chosen fabrics. My favourite print for a binding is a stripe, so I was super happy to find a small piece of a green stripe print! I’m not kidding when I said it was small, it was about 21″ square I think, if I remember correctly lol, so I wasn’t exactly sure it was big enough but I just went for it, keeping my toes crossed the whole time and thankfully the toe crossing worked cause I had enough!
5. Nancy’s table is an oval table so we both decided that a curved edge would look nice, like it was mimicking the shape of the table! Of course you know I used my Creative Grids Curved Corner Ruler for this job, it just makes it so easy, no guessing involved and that’s perfect for me!

Ok…decisions made, sewing commenced and in a very short period of time the festive table runner was complete and I gave her a trial run on my own table!

Isn’t she a cutie?!? I love how it turned out and I’m super pleased with that cute stripey binding too! Hmmmm……do I need a new table runner?!? Should I keep this one?!? Just kidding (sorta)!!!!

I will tell you that I have one regret with this project. I totally forgot to tell Nancy about the super absorbant Zorb inside lol!!! Uggg, I was so excited about it and then I forget to tell her about it lol! I think she was telling me that she had moved it off the table when they were crafting or something like that, because she didn’t want to spill on it and then, and only then, did I realize I hadn’t told her rofl!!!!! Aye yi yi, oh well, she’s now informed and if she reads this post, as she sometimes does, she’ll see my initial excitement over “discovering” this for her project lol!

Ok, now everyone be honest with me….who has already thought of this use for Zorb lol?

That’s all for now my friends! Know that I’m wishing you all the best in this new year and look forward to chatting with you and sharing lots of projects over the upcoming weeks and months! Thanks so much for being here! Cheers!

Shawna