Turkey Trot Table Runner
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope this week is full of family time, days off of work, and extra sewing time! We’re getting into the busy holiday season and I’ve already been quite busy with customer quilts! I love that quilters give their own time and effort as gifts at Christmas time. Quilts really do make the best gifts!
My sweet customer Teresa Castolene brought me this table runner and she is planning to give this as a gift as well… eventually. Ha ha! She told me she wanted this custom quilted and she wanted it to be adorable and very well done so she could pass it on to her kids as a family heirloom. I love that she is making something that she can enjoy but her family can enjoy too.
This pattern is called Turkey Trot by Sandy Gervais for Riley Blake. You can still find some quilt kits with this pattern online, even though this pattern was released a couple years ago. It’s such a cute pattern and is a fun seasonal project to quilt up!
You can see I did several different free motion fillers in the borders and background. The dark green outer border was the hardest one for me to decide what to do… I had already done a mini stipple, piano keys, and pebbles. Sometimes it takes me a while to think about the design that I think will look best. So I focused on finishing the other areas of the quilt first and I ended up doing the outer border last.
I did a simple swirl in the outer border, but I did an echo around both sides of the swirl to give it a more finished look. It made it look more like a swirl braid, which I love! I also did a wonky orange peel design in the patchwork border. Sometimes this is called ” continuous curves”, as you can do a continuous curved stitch path without breaking your thread! This is a favorite skill amongst longarm quilters.
You can see I also did some custom quilting in the body of the turkeys. I talked with Teresa about different options and the only thing she said was no straight line quilting in the turkeys – they were square enough as is! So I used ProStitcher to mark the area of the bodies and put some fun circular designs in each body so the turkeys wouldn’t feel so blocky. Do you want to know the hardest decision about this quilt? What to do with the turkey necks! Every design I thought of using made me think the turkeys would have saggy necks, so after taking some time to think on this as well, I ended up doing some basic cross hatching using a straight edge ruler. And it turned out so cute! Teresa loved it!
When I finish longarming a quilt I always try to take photos to send to the customer so they can see the finished product. And I always include a photo of the back of the quilt too. It’s fun to see all the stitching come together like this! I did a thread change as well, so there is a darker grey thread on the back of the quilt. I did three different colors on top of the quilt, but by keeping a medium grey thread in the bobbin I only had to change the top thread and still got a great end result.
If you’re interested in custom quilting, you’re welcome to send me your quilt! I do both custom and edge-to-edge quilting, and you can fill out my Online Order Form here! And if you have made this Turkey Trot table runner, I want to see! I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving and the Happiest of Holidays!
Join Our Quilt Community!
Join our amazing quilting community! Learn to sew beginner friendly quilt blocks with quilters from all over the world!