Tablerunner Finish!

Sorry for the brief radio silence . . . I had a work conference in Denver and then the Thanksgiving holiday, so am just now trying to catch up!

On other fronts, yay, I'm done! Thanks to the amazing head start I got at the Utah Valley Quilt Guild retreat last month, I finished my tablerunner for the Modern Christmas Tablerunner Swap I'm doing on Flickr!

From checking out my partner's mosaic I figured out that she (along with several other people!) kinda liked trees. Fortunately, that's sort of my paper piecing thing. I've recently discovered these stars, so I thought I'd combine the overlapping trees with some stars.

I had originally finished the first panel of trees (meaning I had finished a set of three trees), when I discovered that the big tree was too short. The bottom of the tree came too close to the bottom of the bottom of the tree on the left, and it looked all wrong. I was so frustrated, because I loved the fabric and everything else about the trees! But back to the drawing board I went and redrafted the pattern for the trees and started over (insert sad emoticon here!).

One of my goals for this tablerunner was to use a lot of non-holiday fabrics. I love the way that bright modern fabrics can be used to make something look holiday appropriate without being explicitly holiday themed.

I did use Riley Blake's Doodlebug Design Santa Santa's Workshop Snowflake fabric throughout the piano key border and in the stars, but other than that I relied on the reds, greens, and turquoises in my stash. I particularly love how the American Jane Punctuation looks like ornaments in the trees! I also have a weakness for birds, so I always try to sneak a bird fabric or two (or three!) into my trees! That's Cloud 9 Heron fabric on the bottom. I also used P&B Textiles' Velocity Feed the Birds in there too. 

So, my tablerunner is pretty much ready to go! I just need to make a Christmas tree ornament. I'm strangely stumped about what to do . . .  any suggestions??