How To Fake It: The Tale of a Fake Vintage Doily Runner

It's a doily, it's a runner, Yes It's Both! My first experience with a doily runner was from a classified ad on  weddingbee. I'd never seen nor ever thought of such a thing. Here's my take on it.

       In a previous post I talked about how I bought 2 lace table clothes at a garage sale. The first turned into table squares and the second much larger one was in the process of being re purposed. Well the project is almost completed and here's what I have. If you'll remember I cut the middle out to make a runner, easy peasy and it looks like this.

                                                  All photos are of the Personal persuasion
       
            Now I have only edges left. I cut out a bunch of the lace patterns that made up the rest of the table cloth with the intention of making them look like a doily runner. Here's a picture of them all spread out on the table.

          To make them look like mismatched doilies some had to go through an aging process. Bring in the tea! I boiled a pot of water and put 4 tea bags in it. I'd read a blurb here and there about this process but I'm pretty much winging this thing.

             I let the tea cool down before I started dipping pieces in it. Be patient, it's worth it to not go to the burn unit. Now here's the part where it starts getting scientific. I rustled up some test pieces and put them in for varying amounts of time to see how the color would turn out.

 

       As you can see there really wasn't a huge difference in the shades and I figure it's going to be very dim at the reception and people won't be able to see very well anyway. So I dipped most pieces pretty quickly and then laid them on an old towel in the bath tub ( wasn't sure if I'd stain the tub).

     
      Once my pieces were dry I laid them back out on the table. I did read this tutorial about how to create a doily runner and took their advice about laying out the big pieces first and then fitting in the smaller ones to fill it out. Since mine are mostly the same size I didn't have to work too hard on that part. I did have to try and mix up the stained ones with the white so it would looked properly proportioned. Here's how the colors turned out.

 

            Now that they are laid out, next step is to make them stick together. I went over the edges with a needle and thread doing long stitches on the under side. It really didn't take very long and you can't see them from the top. Here's the finished product!

      Now if you wanted to you could of course stain more pieces, I only did half. I think it turned out not too shabby if I do say so myself. Cutting out all the patterns was the most time consuming part of this project but when you put on a little "Dog Whisperer" you'll be amazed at how fast it goes, and think of the time and sleep you'll save by not trolling garage sales looking for doilies!  I also had a whole side piece left from the table cloth that I trimmed up to create another runner. For those keeping count that's 3 runners from one table cloth and 6 table squares out of another. Total money spent, $4.  

    What do you think? It takes the cake or it's ghetto?  Lets compare pictures of our DIY doily runners.