UV Craft Challenge 1: Fiddleheads Craft

This has been an interesting project for me with a few twists and changes.

My first thought was to play with plastic packaging in place of rope in a sort of coiled coaster or trivet. And I still want to do that. But, after two weekends in a row of watching house guests slide serving dishes across our old (family heirloom) dining room table I decided a table runner was in order. Something cute, with good coverage, and knowing my family as I do, insulated. I'll still use trivets under hot serving dishes but I'll rest easier knowing there's a little extra protection. So I was leaning in the direction of something quilted.

I also wanted this project to use up as much stash fabric as possible and after some digging came up with this. It's like a very heavy linen with a tight weave and a nice fringe at the selvage.

Turns out, the fabric piece is large enough to be a tablecloth on it's own with plenty of fabric leftover to create my table runner. I think ideally this would be best with the fabric grain running the length of the table, but my extra fabric is on the end and it doesn't matter for this project. And the fabric is a bit too stiff for a quilting project. So I'll go with just a single layer of fabric and save a quilted runner for another day.

I ended up buying the fabric for the fiddlehead design because I didn't like what I had on hand.

I got a little carried away cutting out circles. (I see many circle projects in my future!)

The biggest challenge for me was the layout. I went back and forth between colors and sizes, symetrical and non-symetrical layouts until, after much fiddling (heh), I ended up with the layout below. The purple was nice but ended up looking too Easter-ish. The blue and yellow add interest while staying in the green family.

But how does this have anything to do with fiddleheads you ask? Like this.

I used a double-sided, fusible interfacing called Wonder-Under to attach my circles. First I ironed the interfacing to my circles. Then I cut them into spirals. Those are double cut to allow the base to show through. And then I ironed them to my fabric. My final step will be to fringe the sides of the entire runner. Or perhaps just run a stabilizing seam down both sides and see what happens.