Temptations runner

To say my mother is obsessed with the “Temp-tations Floral Lace” line of dishware from QVC is a gross understatement. She has nearly every piece of the collection, including flatware and the matching oven gloves! She has threatened us not to buy her any more pieces, (which is too bad because it was always such an easy gift idea). But every time we come home, she’s proudly showing us her newest addition(s). Always looking for an excuse to bust out the Silhouette Cameo, I decided to recreate the floral lace into an iron-on to make a table runner for her as a surprise.

I took a bunch of close up pictures of the pattern and was pleasantly surprised about how easy it was to simply use the retrace function in Illustrator. Obviously, in order for it to cut correctly, some cleanup was required. But I love Illustrator, so it was fun. The china cabinet picture only shows a small part of the collection. There’s a buffet with more pieces that’s not pictured and you can even find some of it in various bedroom closets. It certainly makes unloading the dishwasher a challenge.

I bought a two tone gray/beige colored linen runner from IKEA which went with the off-white/black color combo of the dishes. I thought it would look great on the black finish of my mom’s dining room table. I played around with the scale of the pattern and even contemplated doing small repeated pattern on one side and the large scale floral on the other side. I decided against the 2-sided after testing an iron-on on both sides (you basically ruin the first side trying to iron on the second side. Not good. In hindsight, I should have just bought 2 runners…) So, I ultimately decided to do the large scale pattern for the biggest impact thinking that the smaller pattern would get lost when she actually set the table with all of her pieces. She does have bowls that she could use for fruit and I think even a vase that she could center on the runner for day to day use. I think the contrast in scale makes it work beautifully. The vinyl ironed on perfectly and I think my mom was pleasantly surprised to receive some “floral lace” that didn’t come in a QVC box.