When I was invited to participate in this blog hop again this year, I jumped at the chance and knew exactly what I wanted to do. My sister had suggested several years ago that she would like a Christmas Tree Skirt. Several years ago I had purchased some Christmas designs for my embroidery machine and never had a chance stitch them out, and wanted to incorporate those into a tree skirt.
This is my finished skirt.
I went looking on Pinterest for tree skirts, and finally decided on this one by Newton Custom Interiors, mainly because she gave the dimensions, and has a tutorial on how to make the tree skirt. About the only thing I used was the dimensions to make the pattern. I made the pattern with paper, and traced it on a piece of muslin and cut it out about an inch bigger around the sides of the pattern. The reason for me doing this was after I stitched out my Christmas designs i was going to crazy piece the rest of the unit, and they might shrink after embroidering seams. I love, love, love crazy quilting and haven't done it in several years and it was so heavenly to be back at it.
I started embroidering my Christmas motifs on my machine and ran into a couple of snafus. For a good laugh here are a couple of them.
This one got a tangle of threads underneath, and when I tried to cut them loose, the whole throat plate came off.
This one apparently got out of syc from the last mess and was sewing things in the wrong places. I figured it out when it put his eyes and hair and beard on top of his head.
I was finally able to get the 8 motifs embroidered and I started crazy piecing the units. I spent the next two weeks embroidering these units by hand.
I'll show my finished units. and explain the process below on something simpler.
I assembled all the units and added a backing and binding for the top. I was going to add batting but it was going to be too much. Crazy quilting is not generally quilted.
I also decided to have a giveaway on my blog, a little crazy quilted stocking ornament, and I will show how I made that. I had a lot of scraps leftover from my project and decided to use those.
1. I drew out a stocking outline on a piece of muslin for a base. My first piece of fabric I always just randomly cut a 5 sided piece and place it on the muslin.
2. I place the next piece of fabric along one of the edges and sew along that edge. Don't go any further than the piece you are covering. I sew along that edge, and flip it back.
3. Just keep going around in a circle until you have covered the entire shape (plus a little beyond). That shape on the muslin is what I am going to cut out.
3. When I have made the rounds once, I trim up the edges so there is a 5 sided shape again. And just keep going until you have filled in the whole shape. The stocking shape is sort of lost. I trimmed it up again so I have the shape I want to end up with
4. Next comes the embellishment, lace, braid, stitches. There are lots of good resources out there. Sharon Boggan has an online Stitch Dictionary here. I have been crazy quilting for over 20 years, and have multiple books by Judith Baker-Montano, my favorite the Embroidery and Crazy Stitch Tool, Foolproof Crazy Quilting by Jennifer Clouston, Crazy Quilt Stitches by Dorothy Bond, and many others.
5. After I did my stitching, I just added a backing, and I did add a piece of batting.
This is the finished stocking ornament. I am offering this as my giveaway. You can enter to win by leaving a comment. If you are a no-reply blogger and would like to be entered, I will need an email to contact the winner. I will randomly choose a winner on July 30th.
Also the 12 Days of Christmas in July Blog Hop also has a giveaway. FIGO Fabrics has donated a fat quarter bundle of their new Christmas line Wintertide
All you have to do is fill in the form below. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the form to submit.
*** THE DRAWING FOR THIS IS NOW OVER
You can submit an entry at each blogger, and on Sarah's post for the day. Sarah has a beautiful quilt-along going on too.
The line-up for the 12 Days of Christmas in July Blog Hop is below.
SUNDAY, JULY 14TH
MONDAY, JULY 15TH
TUESDAY, JULY 16TH
WEDNESDAY, JULY 17TH
THURSDAY, JULY 18TH
FRIDAY, JULY 19TH
SATURDAY, JULY 20TH
SUNDAY, JULY 21ST
MONDAY, JULY 22ND
TUESDAY, JULY 23RD
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24TH
THURSDAY, JULY 25TH
