Urban Scandinavian Table Runner – the grey and orange reversible version

At the beginning of the year, my mum asked me to make her a table runner for her coffee table. We sat down and did some brainstorming, drew some ideas and searched Pinterest for inspiration.

We came across this pattern called Urban Scandinavian, which seems to have appeared on sewmamasew.com some years ago. Unfortunately, all the links to the original post ended in error messages or simply timed out. So I decided to do my own thing based on the pictures I saw, and here’s what came out of it.

It’s simple raw-edge applique, fused down and then secured with stitching close to the edge.

We decided to make this a reversible runner, and my mum chose an improv pieced background with two large green wedges placed randomly on the runner.

This was a fun experiment and not something I normally do. I enjoy improv piecing, and have some ideas and plans for my scraps, but inevitably other things always come first. Having a priority piece use improv was a good way to get me to do it.

I decided to use the stitching to secure my strips on front of the runner as my quilting stitches. I also didn’t bind this one, but turned it inside out and top-stitched around the edge. I wanted the edge-to-edge look for the Urban Scandinavian side of it, and decided that it would also look better for the improv back to not have a binding. And it saved me from having to decide on a binding that would work well for both.

It worked well for the front, but also on the back, where it ties in with the whole improv look.