Celebrating the New Year in style with a bow tie table runner

Time to celebrate! Well, almost. In yesterday’s post, I pieced the bow tie blocks and put together the table runner. The PFAFF quilt expression 720 will be doing all the work again today! Today I’ll quilt and bind the table runner.

To prepare the table runner for quilting, layer the top with batting. For the runner I fused batting to the top and then layered them on top of the backing, right side down. This let me avoid having pins to move as I quilted.

The first thing I did was stitch in the ditch around the bow ties. I used the Stitch-in-Ditch foot for IDT System. The IDT System feeds the fabric layers evenly under the needle and is activated by lowering and clicking it into the back of a presser foot.

Next I opened the stippling stitches menu to choose one to start quilting. I used stitch 10 to go diagonally across the neutral squares at each end of the runner. I used stitch 4 to quilt across the middle section of neutral squares.

Then it was time to fill in the space between these stitches and the bow ties. To keep my rows of stitches straight and to check for spacing, I used another specialty foot – the Multi-line Decorative foot.

I added more stippling stitches, repeating the same one on each side of the center row.

The reverse side of the runner shows precise, evenly quilted stitches too!

All that’s left to do is to bind the runner. There are several binding methods out there and this is a brief explanation of what I did. I provided several photos to help. I started by ironing approximately ¼” of the binding to the wrong side. Then I lined up the opposite edge of the binding to one side of the runner. I cut a 45° angle on the end of the binding strip and then pinned the binding to the first long side of the runner.

I used the ¼” Quilting foot for IDT System to sew the binding, stopping ¼” from the edge. 

Once I was ¼” from the corner, I stopped sewing and removed the project from under the needle. Then I folded the binding on the diagonal towards the corner, and folded it over at a 90° angle to create a square corner and line up the binding along the next side’s edge.

Keep sewing on the binding, stopping and folding the binding at each corner until about 10″ from the beginning of the binding.

Cut the end of the binding until it will overlap the beginning by about 5″. Cut the end of the binding at an angle opposite the one at the beginning of the binding strip.

Fold the end of the beginning strip ¼” and pin it in place. Lay the end of the binding over the beginning, putting the folded edge inside the folded edge of the beginning. Pin the strips in place and then sew them to the runner. Use the backstitch button to secure the final stitches and remove the project from the machine. Cut off the excess of the binding strip.

Now it’s time to fold the binding twice and bring it to the front of the runner. It will cover the line of stitches from sewing it to the back. I start sewing the binding to the front a few stitches above where the two binding ends are folded. I usually use a decorative stitch to sew the binding to the front, but this time I decided to use the regular sewing stitch.

I lined up the inner edge of the ¼” Quilting foot for IDT System with the edge of the binding and I use the Needle down button. I don’t usually pin the binding except for when I get to a corner. I stop sewing a couple of inches before the corner and work at folding the next side of binding over so I can do a 45° angle at the corner. Once I’m happy with the way the corner looks I pin it in place, knowing I still might fiddle with it when I get a little bit closer.

I take one stitch past the corner and then I pivot to start sewing the binding on the next side. Keep folding and sewing until all the binding is attached.

The runner is now completely finished including the binding. You could choose to hand stitch a few stitches in each corner, but I usually don’t 😉

Now it’s time to celebrate! The PFAFF quilt expression 720 has helped us complete yet another quilted project in time to enjoy it.