Minimalist trees Christmas table runner progress

After I pieced the top of my table runner for the Modern Christmas Table Runner swap, I posted it up in Flickr and asked for opinions about quilting. I wanted to see if my partner had any preference.

Well, I got a tonne of ideas, most of which recommended following the zig zags of the tree shapes. My absolute favourite bit of advice was from Rhonda, who told me to "quilt the snot out of the white parts" to make the trees puff up a little. I'm still giggling to be honest, mostly because that is exactly the sort of phrase I would come out with myself!  But her advice has been on repeat in my head for the last week and I couldn't get away from it!

I decided that a little hand quilting would be nice, and I had the perfect ruby red Perle cotton for it. So I outlined each of the trees in it this week while watching my nightly doses of Aussie Masterchef and really love the effect.

 
Next I took it off to my sewing machine, and, with everyone's advice ringing in my ears, I started by echo outlining each of the trees and then filling in the rest of the spaces. I decided to go very dense and the quilting lines are only 1/4" apart.

I'm totally thrilled with how its looking! Really love how the trees pop against it.

I still need to straight line quilt the rest of the white space but want to put the backing fabric on before I do that.

So this is on target to be all done and ready to post off next week. I also need to do a little handmade ornament, but I have LOADS of inspiration pinned on my Christmas Pinterest board and looking forward to deciding on what to do at the weekend.