New Pattern: Calico Table Runner and More

This festive fall table runner features a harvest of Calico Corn. I supersized my ear of corn quilt block from my Grandma Town block of the month quilt and added the colors of fall. Make it scrappy or planned, but this lovely table runner will look wonderful on your fall table or even as the star attraction of the Thanksgiving table.

I have also included instructions for a large hot pad which is large enough for a casserole dish or cake pan.

The two small hot pads use the 6” version of the calico corn block. Both hot pads would make lovely mini quilts as well. A nice idea for a hostess or holiday gift.

Finished Sizes are Table Runner – 36 ½” x 12 ½”; Large Hot Pad – 12” x 16”; and Small Hot Pad 8” x 8”.

I started with my ear of corn from my Grandma Town Block of the Month from 2015. I started playing around with my design in EQ7, the quilt design software. I ended up ditching the bottom part of the ear of corn. It added complexity to the block, was hard to get the alignment just right, and without it I had a square block. And in the design, you do not even miss it.

Here is my updated ear of corn in fall colors with my multicolored calico corn. It was easy to play around with the different parts of the design in the software. I decided I wanted a much larger 12″ block to make a table runner, so I resized the block.

Here is the larger 12″ block with the extra borders for the large hot pad. It was so easy to add a pieced component to the corn itself with the EQ7 software.

To make piecing the ear of corn easier, I used scrappy fall 1 1/2″ strips in groups of four and sewed them together.

Then I cut them again into 1 1/2″ strips and mixed and matched randomly.

I made 16 patch units to assemble the large ears of corn. You need 3 – 16 patch units for each one.

I used three large ear of corn for the table runner and quilted hash lines through the corn and a free motion echo on the husk.

I quilted little loops all through the background so it looks like small stippling. It makes the calico corn the star!

For the small hot pads, I just kept the hash lines through the whole thing. I did add a layer of Insul Bright heat resistant fabric, so the extra quilting made it lay nice and flat.