QUILTsocial Issue 6 | Page 36

Curling Rocks Quilted Runner Sarah Vanderburgh Today I'm sharing the first part of a tutorial for a quick gift for the season. I'm calling it Curling Rocks Quilted Runner. You could put an exclamation point in there if you want to and add some of that excitement and loud encouragement that some curlers are known for: Curling Rocks! Quilted Runner :) Then I had to make a decision. Did I really have time - and the right fabrics - to try this out? My husband went out to the garage to practice his guitar playing and I quickly decided to give it a go. Inspiration rocks! This runner was inspired by several things. One morning at breakfast I showed my husband a new block being shared by another designer and he said how it kind of looked like a curling rock. It was for a small kitchen appliance! The block size is 81/2" x 8" unfinished. In the photo you can see I built up the background to turn it into a 121/2" unfinished block. (In the photo my curling stone is actually half an inch shorter than the one I'm going to share with you. I decided to make it look a little bigger!) I took a second look and immediately started seeing how to change the block to make it into one. What a neat idea! It passed my husband's approval and now it was on to the next phase. The second part of the inspiration is a quilting friend of mine who I met online. She just recently finished quilting one of my quilts for me! This is the first time I've had someone quilt one of my quilts and, being a friend, she's not charging me normal quilting fees. What would be a good gift to make with this block? I have been racking my brain to figure out a way to show my gratitude. And guess what? She LOVES curling! I decided to try it out as a runner. You can adjust the length of the runner by changing the length of the background fabric between the two blocks. For this runner, I added 12" between the two &