Making a cloth to go under Lisa's autumn runner has turned out to be an endless job. My plan was to make a quilted sixty inch square. To start with, I needed a specific shade of gold to go with the wheat on the runner, and of course there is no commercially dyed linen that works, so I had to dye it myself.
I had a long piece of high quality white linen about twenty-five inches wide. Before cutting it into panels to make a large square, I dyed the cloth. The first immersion was in myrobalan, which yields a soft butter yellow. It turned out to be a pretty color, but not quite gold enough, nor dark enough. The second dip was in fustic and chestnut combined. This was much more successful in both color and value.
Then I sewed the panels together thinking any seams would disappear under the eventual quilting. There was only enough fabric to make panels 59 inches long, so right from the start I was going to end up with a smaller cloth than I had hoped. After layering the linen on top of a flannel middle and a muslin back I marked a one inch grid over the linen and safety-pinned the three fabrics together. I figured I could manage straight lines with my sewing machine if they were held together firmly. ( A moment while I roll my eyes at my own optimism. I can't sew a straight line to save my soul.) It took two days to mark and pin the cloth. Now I am plowing through the seemingly endless lines of machine sewing trying to keep them as straight as possible. It is tedious and frustrating. Maybe long-arm quilting is worth the extra money.