DIY Burlap Table Runners- By Mary Kay and Grace

My friend Mary Kay and I got inspired by pinterest and decided to make burlap table runners. The idea originally came from this blog. We bought about three yards of White Burlap,  actually Mary Kay bought the fabric and shared it with me (such a sweet friend). It was sooo much fabric! Since we were each making one we folded the fabric down the middle and cut in in half so there were now two three yard long pieces that were now skinny enough to pass for table runners. Next we ironed the very wrinkly fabric enough so that it was manageable to work with, but still pretty wrinkly (don't worry about it too much because once it's on the table for a while the wrinkles settle out). Then we folded the edges in on both sides twice about 1/2 inch to create a seam so that it wouldn't fray and to give it a more finished look. To hold the fold in place we ironed it down.

Then I put my handy dandy sewing skills to work and sewed down the very very long seams, leaving about 8 inches unsewn on each end so that we could unravel them.

When I finally finished sewing down the seams the table runner looked like this:

Next we got to to work plucking out the thread. I found that if you pull the thread from the middle of the strand it comes out easier than from the edges, although I'm sure there are probably lots of good thread plucking techniques. Mary Kay made the very true comment of how upset she would be with us if it was the old days where people still had to weave fabric by hand, and here we were ruining their hard labor. Thankfully we didn't have to feel too bad ruining the hard work of a machine. 

Once we had reached the end of my line of stitching we were done plucking and ready to start knotting.

We separated the thread into groups of eight (which sometimes varied from time to time, but no one is counting right?) and then tied them into knots. 

 Side one, fully knotted and ready to go!

And here it is on our dining room table! 

second view