Kymberly Pease « modafabrics

Hi! My name is Kymberly from Peas in a Pod Creations. I’m so excited to be back on the Moda Bake Shop today with this cute table runner. It might look hard, but with the candy charm squares it’s actually pretty easy and versatile. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of this post to see how this runner looks in solids.

4 candy mini-charm packs or 1 charm pack (for this runner I used Kansas Troubles Favorites II)
1/2 yd. dark blue fabric (this will be used for sashing, backing, and binding)
1/8 yd. cream fabric (note: you will need (10) 2.5″ square cornerstones so you could use a jelly roll strip or other scrap)

*Since the Candy mini-charms are 2.5″ square they can easily be created from larger pre-cuts if you can’t find them at your LQS. I wanted some extra fabric so I started with a layer cake, but a charm pack is the perfect substitute in this pattern if you can’t find the mini-charms.

If you’re working with something bigger than the mini-charms cut your fabric into 2.5″ squares.

Match the fabrics from your mini-charm packs and decide which colors you want to use for each star. Kansas Troubles Favorites II has several fabrics in each color so I chose to make a brown, blue, red, and green star. Choose three color/dark fabrics and three lights for each star.

Decide which square will be the center of your star and set aside. Cut your remaining squares in half diagonally to create triangles and sew along short sides of triangles. The corners are made of 2″ HSTs that are created by sewing two small triangles together. I found an easy cheat if you don’t always have perfect points is to sew like fabrics together. This is also a great way to practice those quarter square pieces.

Sew triangles into squares and trim to 2.5″.

I forgot to take a picture of the star points in progress, but it’s the same process as the corner units. The only difference is this time you won’t sew likes with likes. Sew a dark triangle to a light along a short side to create a larger triangle. Sew two large triangles together to create a square and trim to 2.5″.

Assemble pieces as shown, and repeat process for remaining three stars.

Cut dark yardage into 2.5″ strips and subdivide into (13) 6.5″ long rectangles for sashing. Cut (10) 2.5″ squares from light fabric for cornerstones. My favorite method for doing sashing is to sew a long strip on one edge of the block. On the last block sew a second strip opposite the first. Chain piece (8) cornerstones to the remaining strips, and choose two strips to attach cornerstones to the opposite edge. Press blocks and strips and sew a sashing strip to the top of each block. Make sure that the sashing with two cornerstones goes on the block with two strips of sashing. (If I was doing this in a quilt with more than one row I’d sew all of my blocks like this and only the last row would continue with the next step.) Attach your remaining sashing/cornerstone units to your blocks and sew blocks into a row.

I chose to quilt this table runner using a walking foot to quilt in the ditch around the stars.

One 33″x10″ table runner.

Here’s another version of this table runner made with solids and all of the blocks the same. Each star is 6″ square so the length of this table runner can easily be adjusted by adding or subtracting stars.

Hop over to my blog to see a way to use the mini charms to make matching mug rugs.

Kymberly Pease

Peas in a Pod Creations

My name is Kymberly from Peas in a Pod Creations. I’m so excited to be making my debut on Moda today. I have a secret confession…I love winter. I think one of my favorite months is January when the chaos of the holidays has passed, the ground is blanketed in snow and the world is filled with a quite peace. As I was working on this quilt my husband suggested I make the inner section of the split rail block with my lights so that it looks like snowflakes. Suddenly this quilt contained everything I love about the season. I can’t wait to curl up with it and a good book on a snowy night this winter.

1 Jelly roll (For this quilt I used fabric from Kate Spain’s line In from the Cold)

1 yd green fabric (Juniper with white berries)

1 ½ yd blue fabric (Mint with snowflakes)

½ yd grey (Icicle)

4 yd backing (Mint with hot cocoa)

½ yd binding (Hearth with cookies)

Tree Blocks:
make 32

Cut (5) 7” strips from green. Cut strips into triangles with 9” base and point at 4.5”. (I lined my ruler up on 0 to 4.5” and then 4.5” to 9” and cut triangles as shown.)

Cut (8) 5” strips from blue. Cut each strip into 7.25” rectangles. Keeping rectangles in pairs with wrong sides together cut rectangles in half diagonally.

Sew blue triangle to side of green triangle. Press and repeat on other side of tree. (Your trees will look much better if you take time to press at this step.)
*Without going into complicated geometry and templates this was the best way I found to make these trees. Your edges will be a bit wonky, but this is okay. When the block is finished it gets squared up and will look great.

To create trunk cut left over blue into 2.5” x 4” strips. Cut grey into 1.5”x 2.5” pieces. Sew blue rectangles to each side of grey piece. Sew to bottom of tree and square up block to 8.5”.

Snowflake Blocks:

make 31

Divide jelly roll strips into lights and darks. (With In From the Cold I used the reds and greens as my darks and the whites, greys, and blues as my lights. I chose to remove the fabrics I used in the tree block.) Cut each jelly roll into two 18” strips.

Strip piece the lights and darks. Press towards the dark and cut into (4) 4.5” pieces.

Turn top piece so that the light and dark edge matches up with the light edge of bottom piece. I found it worked best to have the light edge on bottom so that the feed dogs didn’t have to worry about a seam and fed pieces through as shown. Press.
*Consistency is very important here. Make sure you lineup all of your blocks in the same way and feed them through in the same direction.