Refreshed Shoo Fly Table Runner

The sewing machine needle has been flying here lately - I have been a busy girl. It has been on my mind to refresh some of my older patterns, and since I'm just loving my French General scraps right now, I put them to work. You saw the Shoo Fly blocks recently, and now I can share with you some of the recent work in progress:

After I got the top together, I had a bit of a hard time choosing a backing fabric. Hunting thru the stash found the leftovers of the spotty backing from my Turning Four-T quilt. I had to make the back up from three pieces, but doesn't it match the front well?

This picture was to serve two purposes - firstly to show you a little of how I'm quilting the blocks, and secondly to share that I had scorched that cream coloured square a little while I was pressing. Oops! You can't actually see the mark as the bright lights under the machine have washed the colour out - but if I'm really honest, it's not too bad anyway.

And a little in progress shot while I was quilting on the hexagons. I'm super happy with how they looked in the end.

And here's the finished article. It looks so much nicer now than the old original Thimbleberries one that I made almost 9 years ago. I've re-written the pattern for my Etsy store, and if I can bear to part with it, this runner is destined to be a gift.

Last picture of the runner for the day - Gratuitous pattern shot :-)

Also, I wanted to share a couple of gifts I recently received - I truly have the most wonderful friends on earth:

My lovely friend Wendy from quilt group found this side plate for me while we were all on our holiday break. She was in a second hand store and stumbled across it for the bargain price of $4.00 and thought to grab it for me. I have plenty of the dinner plates, and it's the side plates and salad plates that I'm looking for, so this was a 'meant to be' find. Thank you Wendy!!

And my sweet friend Bridget from class gave me the most darling gift on our first week back after holidays:

Bridget knows my love of Masons Vista dinnerware, and also my love of Nutcrackers. While browsing Etsy, she found me these miniature plates! Do you see the size of them there? Ohhhh my goodness!!

I'm not sure if Bridget knew that one of these days I'd love to have a Victorian doll-house - but it is actually on my bucket list, I've even been pinning a few lately on Pinterest. I'm just gob-smacked by the detail of these darling tiny things, and also by Bridget's wonderful generosity and thoughtfulness. Thank you so much!!

Well, that's it for today, I ended up writing a bigger post than I intended, so thank you for sticking with it. If you have an inkling that you'd like to make a shoo-fly runner - head on over to my Etsy store. You may well be inching me along to my Victorian doll-house dream! :-)