Christmas Reflections - Runner and Mini Pattern

A while back I made this table runner from some red and aqua fabrics I had in my cupboard. It was a spur of the moment thing. :) I designed it to fit a certain space in our dining room which is teal and aqua. It's called Christmas Reflections, which was my Mum's idea.

The runner was quick to cut and sew, and the little bit of applique was so relaxing to sit and stitch. I had so much fun quilting it. It's supposed to look a bit like snow falling from clouds and settling between the trees. 

The space between the stars and tree trunks had me stumped for a while, but after a sketching a few options, I went for this long swirl design, and I like it! The scale is tiny. There's just a couple of millimetres between the lines of quilting. 

Prior to any quilting on the runner though, I made a little mini quilt to trial a design on. I got VERY frustrated quilting this because my thread kept breaking. I think it was because I had the feed dogs down... It may sound odd, but my machine seems to prefer free-motion quilting with the feed dogs up and my stitch length set to zero. I've had no trouble with thread breaking since. 

The reason there are some wavy lines in with the swirls is because of that thread-break issue. I thought the thread might cope better with lines than swirls. I was wrong though - it still broke. 

The pattern for this runner AND the mini quilt (all in the one pattern) is now available in my Etsy store, here. 

Thanks for looking, and Happy Sewing!

Hope