Another Finish

About a year ago I wrote about making napkins. In a couple of cases I made napkins to match table runners I gave to friends and family. I've made quite a few of the insulated table runners that can serve as one big hot pad in the center of the table. This pink and cream one was designed to match my mother-in-laws dishes, and I fussy cut roses and appliqued them hither and yon.

This one has a similar story. It was made for a favorite aunt to go with her Franciscan Apple dishes. And I made a few others. 

Even before I made these gifts, I had one planned for myself. Mine was going to be big and I planned to use it on the kitchen counter to the left of my stove. I have a granite countertop to the right which I can set hot pans on, but I thought it would be nice when cooking for a big group to have plenty of surface to take something hot.

Well guess what! After only about a year and a half. I finally finished mine.

Truth be told, now that it's finished, I don't know if I will ever use it. With family far away we don't have lots of big family dinners here at the house, and the only big party I cook for at home is at Christmas. This fabric definitely doesn't say Happy Holidays. But at least the project is out of the  UFO pile.

And it does have a really adorable little girl and pup for a back. In fact the whole design was predicated on using this panel for the backing. I don't usually go for cutesy images or sayings, but I really liked the cherry pie fabric, and for some unknown reason felt I had to order the panel which was part of the collection. But for the rectangular panel I wanted to use for the backing, I might have designed something square, like this.

But that's another  project for another time. Right now it's time to dig through the UFO pile and finish up a few more projects! How about you? What are you finishing up this week? Month?  Year?