Contest Winning Table Square

Table Square My favorite little quilt shop held a challenge contest right before Christmas. The challenge was to create a table runner or table square using  a fat-quarter of a particular fabric.  I choose the pine cone fabric and bought a little extra.

I grabbed the brown and red fabrics from my stash. I designed this table square to fit my dining room table. I began by cutting a 20" square of the brown fabric, applying HeatNBond to the back, folding it in fourths and using my Accuquilt Studio cutter to cut the center square. I carefully ironed the cut out to the fat-quarter of challenge fabric and appliqued using a narrow satin stitch on all edges.

Once the applique was finished, I added a 3/4" red framing border. Next, I added 4" borders of the challenge fabric with 4" square cornerstones.

I quilted the piece with small wandering loops on the pine cone fabric and quilted a snowflake design in each cornerstone to mimic the snowflakes near the reindeer.

The red, which is the framing border, was also used for the backing and binding.

During the shop's Christmas Open House, customers voted for their favorite piece.

This was a fun contest and it was a challenge to create a piece with predetermined guidelines. All of the entries were beautiful pieces and showed amazing creativity.

It was a thrill to get the phone call letting me know my piece came in first place but was even more exciting to find notes pinned to the back with contact information from people who wanted to buy my creation and/or my pattern.

I can't wait to see what the challenge is next year!

Happy Quilting,
Laurel