Home-Stars Table Runner Finished – TGIFF!

Our Home-Stars table runner for Sue’s sister is finished. Complete. Finito. Fini. How perfect for a TGIFF – Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday – don’t you think? Join us for today’s linky party and share your recent or almost-finishes.

Home-Stars Inspiration

We found inspiration in the Cottage Stars tutorial from  Missouri Star Quilt Company with a few modifications. This table runner is for Sue’s sister, Janice. She just purchased a new side table that was just begging for a special table runner. Indeed, we are happy to make something special for her . . . but she needed to put some prep time in, too.

We pulled out a few of our charm packs for her to pick from (we might have just one or two laying around). She chose the softly muted Buggy Barn Basics pack, and I had her set to work. She had to select each house’s base and roof. That took her a while to get the layout just right. If you look carefully, you can see Addison’s feet as she had a snack and watched Gamma.

Home-Stars Block Details

I did a quick mock-up using EQ8 for how we pictured the house. The original block finished at 4″ x 5.5″, but we changed it to 4″ x 6″. That small change makes the math so much easier to fit the houses into the size we need.

Using one five-inch square for the body of the house and another one in a complementary color, it’s easy to build a village. Here’s how I did it, with the diagram on the left depicting the body of the house and on the right, the roof and door with a bonus piece.

• Body of the Home (one color)
• One – 2″ x 4.5″
• Two – 3″ x 2″
• Roof (second color)
• One – 2.5″ x 4.5″
• Door (second color)
• One – 1.5″ x 3″
• Extra scrap (second color)
• One – 2″ x 2″ – add to your collection as a bonus
• From Background Fabric
• Two – 2.5″ squares (for the sky)

Using up all of two charm pack pieces with one bonus 2″ square is nice! The roof and door pieces will need to be separated throughout the houses unless you like the two to match.

We carefully picked up all her choices and used our sophisticated row markers (a piece of paper stating Row 1). Fabric for the door choice was left up to me and I randomly assigned the fabric to not match the roof pieces. We also used discretion as our choice for the background sky which is a blue-grey Grunge-type fabric. Also pictured is the yellow fabric for the upcoming stars.

Home-Stars Houses Complete

It didn’t take long once I focused and got to work to finish all 13 houses! Here is our little village, or one long block. In case you’re wondering which houses the three of us picked as our favorite: Sue picked house #1; Janice selected house #3, just one over from her sister; and I chose house #13.

It was time to get focusing on the Friendship Star blocks and the sky to get this into a table runner top.

Friendship Home-Stars

The Friendship star block is very easy to construct. It consists of four HSTs (half-square triangles) along with one star-colored center fabric square and four background fabric squares.

The four corner pieces plus the center are 2.5″ squares, along with the trimmed HSTs. For each star you need:

• Four – 2.5″ squares – background fabric
• One – 2.5″ square – star fabric
• Two – 3.25″ squares – background fabric (makes four HSTs)
• Two – 3.25″ squares – star fabric (makes four HSTs)

Draw a diagonal line on the reverse side of the 3.25″ background squares and match each with a 3.25″ star fabric square. Sew 1/4″ seam on each side of the diagonal lines and then cut apart and trim. You can make the HSTs following this method or whatever method you prefer! The layout shared above is similar to a nine-patch. Sew each row together and then the rows to each other. You’ll have twinkling stars before you know it. We made eight of these blocks.

Building a Home-Stars Neighborhood

Once all the stars were ready, it was time to consider the layout of the sky. Since we want a runner that finishes at 17″ to 18″ wide, two rows of stars were necessary.

We alternated the stars with 7.5″ x 6″ rectangles of the background fabric. Sue cut them out for me and away I went, sewing the two rows of stars to the thirteen homes. Lickety-split it was together – time for layering and quilting.

Home-Stars Home

Layering happened quickly using a sweet gray polka dot fabric leftover from an earlier project.

I snuck in some quilting time in between Colt’s Have A Ball quilt, which is going to be a finish this month, too. A simple loop design with a five-point star in the eight stars wrapped up quickly. I added the binding, and then Sue handstitched it to the back and we were delivering it the same day!

Home-Stars now resides on Janice’s new bicycle table, which Addison has deemed as her special spot for lunch. We think it looks pretty darn spiffy there; what do you think?

♥ ♥ ♥

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