It started as a leader/ender project when I was making a braid table runner. I had a pile of green and white (well, not white, but low volume) prints beside the machine and I was sewing these together, rather than cutting the machine thread. 

Before long, I had a pile of paired squares, so I then sewed those together so they were alternating green/white. When they were all together, I decided that five squares across was a good amount, so I laid them out on my sewing table and added the fifth square, depending on whether the row needed a green or white.

Once I had a long patchwork piece and had run out of low volume squares that were cut and ready, I added the borders. I just love that thin candy cane border between the patchwork and the outer red border. 

I changed the machine thread to Aurifil 40wt thread in red (number 2250) to ditch quilt the borders. I recently discovered that my machine has an overlocker foot (2A), so I've taken to adding an overlocker stitch around the edges of my projects before adding the binding. It's an extra step, but the result is lovely and it helps the fabric to stay where I want it, when the binding is added. I used to use a zig-zag around the edges, but this works much better.

Using a hera marker, I marked some lines and added some rows of big stitch hand quilting using Aurifll 12wt thread in the same green as the quilting (number 2840). I love the extra special sparkle that hand stitches bring to a project. I machine bound the runner with the red thread and it was ready to lay on my coffee table... well after a little photo shoot.

What you can't see in this picture was Chester, my big sleeping lump of a cat. As soon as the Christmas tree comes out and the tree skirt is laid down, that's his most favourite sleep location for December. When he was little, he used to bat the low hanging decorations, but he's 9 now and not bothered any more.