Gypsy Rainbow is Here!

I am just tickled pink, and yellow, and purple to give you a peek at my new table runner!  I am calling it Gypsy Rainbow and it makes me smile like a crazy woman each time I walk past the dinning room and catch a glimps of it.

This piece was inspired by a coin quilt that I saw over at Tallgrass Prarie Studio but then I took it in my own direction using cuts from my various jelly rolls plus some nice muslin from my stash. The back ( which I forgot to photograph) is done in the bird print from Tula Pink.

It is 62 inches long and 18 inches wide and while too long for a lot of tables it's just right from my super long table and thus the custom length :)  As an added bonus I used Insulbrite for the batting, in effect making the world largest soft trivet!  I can't say that I loved working with the Insulbrite but it will be an effective way to protect my table from hot pots of soup and family sized casserole dishes.

As for technique this was an exploration piece in that I gathered all my pink cuts in one bag.. greens in another... etc.. then I pulled them " blind" and sewed each color group together and then I stuffed all the color groups together and pulled in in random for the first strip and then mached up..sorta not really for the second strip.

Then came the quilting.. this is where I got stuck for a couple of days since I was looking for inspiration. I knew that I wanted to call it ~Gypsy Rainbow~ for it's free and spirited use of color but then I was totally at a loss!  So when at a loss I did what I normally do and set up a big brain map on paper ( yes, I am just that geeky).. in the center I put the quilt name and from there all the words I associated with it.  Believe me  I wrote down some pure drivel but one word group stuck in my head,  ~tea leaves~..  I played around with this for a while and created a repeating  leaf motif for the colored blocks and then a free motion line and leaf patern for the borders. ( You might ba able to see this if you click on the photos)

The edges are bound in a series of left over strips that I pieced together and then treated as binding ( so it was not bias but in the case that was fine). I machine sewed them to the front and then hand finished the binding since I like that so much more..don't you??

I have already had a few local request for my pattern and a few requests for kits and I think I am going to be doing a class on this..... is this something you might like?.. if so let me know and I will give it a deeper think and get right back to you :) In the mean time I think I will go gaze at my runner a bit more.