Wall Runner?

The second project I made was for my mother-in-law's birthday (2009).  Boy was I nervous about this one.  My MIL loves to decorate and coordinate and all those other 'ates' that I don't have very high on my list.  Gotta love her for it tho. So I picked out some colors and fabrics that I thought would work (with the help of my DH) and made up a table runner for her.  I thought it turned out pretty good and I am in love with the floral fabric and the blue one I used.

I had some pieces leftover from how I made the flying geese so I decided to make a matching little wall hanging.  It was just small and cute and showed off the floral fabric we loved so much.  

Well somehow my dear MIL convinced herself that I had intended the long table runner sized piece as a wall hanging.  Even tho I didn't put a sleeve or loops like the little one, she insisted that I told her it was a wall hanging.  Bless her heart...she found a way to hang it.  I'll willingly admit that it looks just fine and maybe it's even shown off a bit more on the wall than under a bunch of stuff on a table.  Just goes to show you don't always need to use something only for what it's made.

In the Beginning...

So the backstory is that I started sewing/quilting at the end of 2008. I'd gotten a basic sewing machine for a wedding gift that summer and had entered the dormant part of my seasonal job. I picked it up because I had a specific project in mind - a pretty major project for a beginner which will be discussed in a later post.

I started simply with a couple of pillows. The fabric came from a roll of four fat quarters that were on sale at JoAnn's probably. I laid out the design myself and learned how to do the basic half-square triangles and flying geese. And because of fabric limitations and my own desires, I swapped the colors around on each side.

Blue is my favorite color and I love yellow as an accent.

The second pillow was a Christmas gift for my sister-in-law and her husband. The live down south now and she misses the snow. I made an identical one for good friends of mine in CA, who are also plants from the Midwest and miss the snow. They had an off white fleece for the backing.

(Forgive me my unembellished post. I'm still learning!)