Quick holiday gift tutorial – Curling Rocks Quilted Runner

Today I’m sharing the first part of a tutorial for a quick gift for the season. I’m calling it Curling Rocks Quilted Runner. You could put an exclamation point in there if you want to and add some of that excitement and loud encouragement that some curlers are known for: Curling Rocks! Quilted Runner 🙂

Inspiration rocks! This runner was inspired by several things. One morning at breakfast I showed my husband a new block being shared by another designer and he said how it kind of looked like a curling rock. It was for a small kitchen appliance!

I took a second look and immediately started seeing how to change the block to make it into one. What a neat idea!

The second part of the inspiration is a quilting friend of mine who I met online. She just recently finished quilting one of my quilts for me! This is the first time I’ve had someone quilt one of my quilts and, being a friend, she’s not charging me normal quilting fees.

I have been racking my brain to figure out a way to show my gratitude. And guess what? She LOVES curling!

Then I had to make a decision. Did I really have time – and the right fabrics – to try this out? My husband went out to the garage to practice his guitar playing and I quickly decided to give it a go. This is what I came up with:

The block size is 8 1/2″ x 8″ unfinished. In this photo you can see I built up the background to turn it into a 12 1/2″ unfinished block. (In this photo my curling stone is actually half an inch shorter than the one I’m going to share with you. I decided to make it look a little bigger!)

It passed my husband’s approval and now it was on to the next phase.

What would be a good gift to make with this block?

Of course, traditionally there are two colors of stones – usually red and yellow – so a design that incorporated both would be best.

I decided to try it out as a runner. You can adjust the length of the runner by changing the length of the background fabric between the two blocks. For this runner, I added 12″ between the two blocks.

My husband really likes the idea of a curling quilt. His stepdad was a huge curling fan and my husband watched a lot of curling growing up. The curling quilt he envisioned would look like a curling sheet with the different color stones on each side at the bottom with black center and hog lines and of course, with the target at the top. I think it’s a neat idea too, but all that plain white background doesn’t interest me! Maybe you want to give it a try!

I think a pillow or zippered bag would also be fun ways to use this block. A set of placemats could be fun too!

You don’t need a lot of any of the colors to make this block.

light grey – fat eighth
dark grey – fat eighth
red piece – 6 1/2″ x 5 1/2″
yellow – piece – 6 1/2″ x 5 1/2″
white/background fabric – 1/2 yard

backing fabric – 1/2 yard
batting – 20″ x 36″

I used jelly roll strips for my fabrics. Finding two grey fabrics that have contrast between each other will really help to define the curling stone. One of my grey fabrics is from the Stonehenge Mother Earth line and I think it really mimics the look of the rocks well.

I wasn’t convinced until finishing the runner that adding binding would be necessary. I like to do quick finishes for projects this size and usually use the envelop method to stitch runners closed. Instead the idea of adding the black to look like the curling sheet convinced me to include this design element.

You will need

black – one fat quarter to make 2 1/2″ binding strips

Tomorrow we’ll start cutting our fabrics to make the Curling Rocks Quilted Runner. Even if you’re already making other gifts, a half hour a night will get this runner completed by the weekend!

Have fun looking through your stash – hurry, hurry HARD! 🙂