In these colder months as much as I enjoy sewing, I enjoy being warm and comfortable more. I’m lucky to have a dedicated room for sewing and whilst not massive it’s big enough and works for me.  Best of all I can close the door on the mess! The picture below will cause my mother’s eye brows to rise as it is a complete lie, it virtually never looks like this.

The problem is the room is chilly and this is not because I leave the velux window open. It does have a large radiator but the room sits under an uninsulated eave and isn’t the most inviting when the log burner is on downstairs in the lounge. Frankly the option of leaving the cosy warmth of that room for a distinctly colder room is not appealing. The solution? Of course to bring the sewing machine downstairs and set it up in the lounge.

I really don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before. It was triggered by a friend’s foray into furniture restoration and showing me all the bargains she got from EBay. Admittedly the best bargains were the ones where collection was the only option which of course makes sense. She had bought beautiful chairs, well potentially beautiful in their pre restored state, for a few pounds each.

I figured out that I could fit a console table against the window which would easily accommodate my small Pfaff Passport machine. Well one browse on EBay found a number of options. I wanted a simple, dark finished table but reasonably light in weight so I could move it easily.

Like my friend it wouldn’t bother me to make a reasonable trip to get it but fortunately I found one only 30 minutes drive from Cirencester where I was due for a 90th birthday party. So it all worked out beautifully.

Its a sweet table. Yes a fair few marks but nothing ghastly and for the princely sum of £16 I really can’t complain. I’d have a whole load more marks if I was over 100 years old!

I could ask Gill to restore it but there will be that usual tussle over me wanting to pay for her time  and she refusing. Perhaps we could do a swap, I make her something and she does the table. Or more appealing she shows me how it’s done! Either way it can wait. But it does need a cover so the marks don’t get worse. The Passport has a soft base which I don’t think would scratch but there might be friction marks so a sewing mat was needed.

I had a whole bunch of left over half rectangle blocks from this quilt which lives in that room. It was a no brainer  to use them and making up four diamonds and it was almost big enough. A scrappy border and the top was finished, just the quilting to do.

Let’s admit some parts of quilting are boring with times filled with endless sewing and manoeuvring of fabric, particularily at the quilting stage. This table runner is one such example not helped by the close quilting I wanted I knew it was going to be a long job. It was not helped by being backed by headliner fabric, a thin foam material used for lining the interior roofs of cars. It’s quite firm but flexible. It gives  good stability for the finished article  but of course is more difficult to handle when sewing. But having the opportunity to sit in the warmth and catch up on television made for a very pleasant evening. I’d been recommended the US drama Homeland many, many times but was daunted by just quite how many hours of television that meant watching but it was a perfect accompaniment. Good drama, subtitles and a relatively easy but pacy plot was perfect for watching with one eye on sewing the other on the plot.

Of course it had to be inspected by Skye and I’m afraid she found it wanting. I like the cover very much and will use it although only when sewing as I like the dark wood finish but I forgot the lesson I should have learned with this table runner….. wavy borders.

Thanks to blu tack you can’t see the waves but they are there. I had failed to measure the borders and precisely add them. The same with this table runner I chose to preserve the points of the diamonds rather than precisely put on the border. I’m midst a medallion quilt which is entirely borders really  I must remember this lesson!

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts