ear of corn quilt block | Lori Miller Designs

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.

The large hot pad is perfect for a casserole dish or cake pan size item.

Wouldn’t this hotpad make a great mini quilt to hang on your door for Thanksgiving too?

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Grandma Town Block of the Month

If you are new to the Grandma Town BOM, this row by row quilt was a labor of love to celebrate my Iowa roots. I spent my childhood visiting my Grandparents on their farm just west of Des Moines in Earlham, Iowa. It is especially a tribute to my dear Grandma.

When my sisters, brother and I were little and my parents would drive us to my grandparents farm, my brother would yell, “We are going to Grandma Town!”. It was a loving tribute that stuck. This little quilt is full of those reminders of the farm and of Grandma, who loved to garden and loved to cook. Each block is a sweet memory of my youth growing up on that country farm.

I hope you will find some shared love for your family, a cherished farm or your own grandma in my quilt. You can make all of these sweet blocks or pick and choose the blocks you like the most to make something special for yourself or a dear loved one.