DIY St. Patrick’s Day Table Runner

I so want to show you the DIY St. Patrick’s Day table runner that I made. It is quilted and embellished with Cricut iron on – so it incorporates a few different crafting techniques.

UPDATE: See my Take 2 on a DIY quilted St. Patrick’s Day table runner. Trust me, it looks so much better than this one!

Last month, I went a little nuts trying to make tons of Valentine’s Day projects.

It was a bit of a rabbit hole because I bought a new Cricut Maker machine (see the unboxing here), Then I bought a bunch of fabrics on sale from Cricut.

At this point, I thought it would be a good idea to learn how to make basic quilt to brush up my sewing skills. This led me to joining Creativebug and learning how to make some simple quilted potholders.

I could go on.

But the bottom line is that I have been looking for creative things to make so that I can brush up on my sewing skills and my Cricut skills at the same time.

Now that it is March, I turned my attention to St. Patrick’s Day.

Designing a Table Runner

I really didn’t know what exactly I would make for St. Patrick’s Day until I arrived at the fabric store.

You see, the closest JoAnn Fabrics is about a half hour away from where I live. I honestly hadn’t been there in years. 

Think kid in a candy shop.

Step One: Finding the Fabric

I was digging through the remnant bins like a crazy person and finding so much cool stuff – including a decent sized piece of kelly green cotton fabric.

Beyond that, there were no Saint Patrick’s Day fabrics in the bin so I set my sights on a bolt of shamrock fabric and took it to the table to have a yard cut.

Well, wouldn’t you know it – as I was chatting with the lady at the desk – she realized that we were near the end of the bolt and she asked me if I wanted the remainder at 50 percent off.

Without thinking I said oh yeah – sure. 

And then it dawned on me that I was getting just shy of 2 full yards of shamrock print fabric!

What in the world was I going to do with all that?

Step Two: Deciding on a Project

In the back of my mind I had a thought about making a DIY St. Patrick’s Day table runner.

And now I had plenty of fabric to make it with.

However, the shamrock fabric that I had picked out was more casual and suited towards a pillowcase – or potholder, placemat, oven mitt type project.

I thought I could dress it up a bit if I combined it with the kelly green from the remnant bin and some gold-ish upholstery fabric that I had left over from another home decor DIY project where I upholstered this bench.

Also, I had some dark green glitter Cricut Iron On Vinyl which I think came with my Easy Press Essentials Bundle – which could make for some fun embellishments on the table runner.

Step Three: Designing the Table Runner

I was sort of flying by the seat of my pants here so I will tell you how I went about designing this DIY St. Patrick’s Day table runner.

First, I knew that I wanted the runner to go lengthwise on my kitchen table.

I also did not want it to be super long and drape over each end.

This is because people do so much more than eat at our table. Homework happens there, bills get paid, I even use it as a craft table because I don’t have a dedicated craft room where I can work.

And when we eat at the table, there are usually people sitting at both table heads and I could see a long table runner causing a disruptive tug of war situation at meal time.

So, I wanted it to be shorter.

Because the shamrock print fabric reminded me a bit of bedsheets and because I had a lot of it, I decided to use this on the bottom side of the table runner and also as the binding.

On the top, I decided to create a center panel with the gold fabric and surround it with a frame of kelly green fabric.

I used Cricut Design Space and images from my Cricut Access subscription to design a shamrock pattern using the dark green glitter iron on which I would apply to the gold center panel. (I think that kelly green iron on might have actually looked better, but I didn’t have any and I wasn’t a hundred percent certain that this St. Patrick’s Day table runner that I was designing would come out decent anyway – so I went with what I had).

Step Four: Deciding on the Measurements

Oh my – this was much harder than I thought.

I knew what size I wanted the finished table runner to be – so the back panel was easy.

But the front panel involved piecing fabrics together – and boy was I getting it wrong.

I cut strips from the kelly green fabric that were too wide and so uneven – even though I used a rotary cutter and a self healing mat.

Eventually, I trimmed the strips down and the made the center panel bigger.

Basically these are the measurements that I used (coming soon):

• Fabric 1 (shamrocks)  – back panel:
• Fabric 1 (shamrocks) – binding:
• Fabric 2 (green strips) – front border:
• Fabric 3 (gold) – front center panel:

Step 5: Sewing the Front Panel of the Table Runner

The first thing that I did was cut the back panel out of the shamrock fabric.

This was easy.

Next I cut the strips out of the green fabric and the center panel out of the gold fabric.

Using a 1/4 inch seam allowance (I find that using a quarter inch foot on my sewing machine helps me to sew straight lines better) I sewed the side green strips to the sides of the gold center panel.

Then I sewed the 3 green strips together to form the top and bottom border of the the front panel.

Finally, I sewed the top and bottom border to the front center panel.

Step 6: Iron On the Cricut Vinyl

In Cricut Design Space using images from Cricut Access, I created 4 shamrocks that were 4 inches wide and 6 inches high.

I decided to do three of the same 3 leaf clovers and slip in one different 4 leaf clover that was basically made up of word art. I used the follow image sets to create my design:

• 3 leaf clover
• 4 leaf clover word art

I cut these with my Cricut Maker machine out of dark green glitter iron on vinyl.

Here’s a tip – the 3 leaf clovers were easy to weed but that word art? Oh my! I used my Cricut Brightpad with the specialized weeding tool set and it did make the job a lot easier.

Next I ironed the vinyl onto the gold center panel of my St. Patrick’s Day table runner using my small EasyPress and mat.

The spacing was a little tricky and there are things I would have done differently (see below). But I tried to center them and space them evenly across the center panel of the table runner.

Step 7: Create Your Quilt Sandwich

Now it was time to put it all together.

I cut a piece of cotton batting with scrim the same size as the backing fabric.

Then, using curved safety pins for quilting, I made a sandwich of the backing, the batting as the middle layer, and the front panel on top.

Step 8: Sew It All Together

I apologize.

My goal was to show you the completed project.

However, I have been working on this for days and finally as I was putting the binding on today – well, let’s just say that mitered corners don’t come naturally to me.

I had to rip the binding off, it was such a mess.

It will take a little finessing to make it look right – completely user error.

Life is also getting in the way of my finishing this project over the next couple days – and I really wanted to give you some ideas that you can use for your own St. Patrick’s Day projects well in advance of the day itself.

So, I am showing you my work in process.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or clarifications you might have or need.

What I Would Have Done Differently

There is so much I coulda woulda shoulda done differently, and here is just a partial list.

• I would have started this project earlier.
• Definitely would have chosen different prints for the fabric that were more sophisticated and less bed sheety.
• I probably would have gone with kelly green glitter vinyl iron on instead of the dark green.
• As for that big center panel – I think I would have broken it up into four blocks and ironed one shamrock on each block and then quilted them all using the stitch in the ditch method.

Happy creating!