Simple Circles Table Runner, Day 7

Very often with sewing projects, you spend more time measuring, cutting, pressing, pinning, clipping, turning, etc., than you do sewing.  This project was no different.  If I were to calculate how much time I spent pressing the muslin, tracing the patterns, trimming the circles, layering the fabric, notching the edges, turning the circles inside out and arranging the circles, I'd find that I had spent less than 10% sitting at the sewing machine.  It's all part of the process, but sometimes I don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything unless I'm actually running the machine.

Notches on red circle.

When you sew curves you have to cut notches into the seams (without cutting through the stitches, though!) so that when you turn your piece inside out the material doesn't bunch up on the edges.  With these circles I cut notches every 1/2" or so.  Even though the directions said to cut the notches around the entire circle, after about the third circle I stopped cutting the notches at the opening, since the openings were going to be covered by another circle anyway.

Before turning the circles right side out.

  

After turning them. 
They look like fabric flapjacks!  YUM!

After I turned the circles right side out and pressed them, I had to do a topstich.  I debated whether or not to practice my free-motion skills and do some decorative stitching, but then decided to keep it simple this time around, so I just stitched around the circles, 1/4" from the edge.

One thing I noticed after adding the topstitch was that the edges of the circles curled up slightly.  I tried to find a solution to this on the internet, but I didn't find anything about it, so I just played around with the stitch length and the tension but neither made any difference.  Hopefully it won't be too noticeable with the final product, but in the meantime, I'm crossing my fingers in the hopes that a fairy sewing godmother shows up and tells me how to fix it.

Almost finished!  The second-to-last step I needed to do was to figure out the design of the runner.  It turned out that it required more planning than I anticipated.  For one, I had to figure out how much room I'd have on the table that this runner would end up on.  Also, do I want the runner to hang over the sides, and if I use placemats will I leave it on the table or remove it?  I decided that since I have cats that like to run around and pull things that hang, I'd make the runner shorter than the table.  And since I will most likely use during mealtimes to place serving dishes on, I can't make it too wide because it'll overlap the placemats.

After making these decisions I found that I had way too many circles, so I had to choose which of the eight larger circles I'd leave out.  It's okay, though, because I'll just make another runner and give it away as a gift.  Two runners for the price of one!  Hooray!

Finally, it was design time.  If I had more table room then I would have thrown the circles in the air and then sewn them up in whatever pattern they landed in, but since I had dimension restrictions, I had to plan it out carefully.

Tune it tomorrow to see the final project!