Other posts on this project: Christmas Runner, Christmas Runner Pt. 2.

Yes, I’m very late to this party. I started this runner before the holidays, but I made so many other things that I didn’t have time to finish this. In my quest to end Crafter’s Block I picked this up again. It gives me tons of time to finish this for next Christmas.

I got really far on this before throwing my hands up in frustration. I didn’t have a walking foot on my old machine, so quilting this was kind of a nightmare. The batting is extra lofty, so it’s like trying to quilt a pillow. When it was time to make the cross hatching, the seams just doubled up all over themselves. When I picked this up last week, I spent the first hour or so just ripping out the old quilting seams. I tried out the walking foot my mom included with my new machine. I’d never used one before, and it made a huge difference.

The real problem is the back of this runner. The front seams quilted really nicely with the walking foot, but I could not keep the backing straight. So now it looks jumpled and sewn over at a lot of the seams. I’m sure this is because when I started quilting this the first time I removed the basting pins as I was going along. I tried to re-pin it, but I got a little lazy. And even pinned, I don’t know that my sandwiching skills are good enough yet to keep the back smooth when I can’t even see it. I quilted from the middle out because I thought that would help fix the problem I had the first time. Maybe that’s not the right way to do this. Or maybe I’ll just stop using such lofty batting.

I think I’ll try pulling out a couple of the folded over stitches to see if that helps smooth out the back. Then all I have to do is square it up and bind it.