Where Did 2019 Go?

2019 Flew By

Life and Project Updates

As many of us do, we start our year off with lots of ideas and plans in our head of all the things we are going to do including blogging and then life gets in the way. 

We had several serious health emergencies this year with several family members including the loss of my uncle.

I spent several weeks going back and forth between the state where I am living and the state the rest of the family lives in.

I am hoping and praying this year is much better! 

Now for some good things that came out of 2019, I made a Christmas Tree Skirt and a Wedding Quilt. I will share the wedding quilt in another post.

My Quilted Christmas Tree Skirt Project

My daughter asked me to make her a nice quilted tree skirt for her Christmas present. She said she wanted only green and white. We looked through some fabric I had and picked out a fabric she liked, but I didn't have enough for the project. Then I made a Pinterest board with different style Christmas tree skirts. She fell in love with a tree skirt that was a french braid style quilted skirt and the way it was pieced gave it an ombre effect. The example was blue and white and she said she would love it if I could do the same in green and white. 

So I searched and ordered a book that had the pattern (French Braid Obsession: New Ideas For The Imaginative Quilter, by Jane Hardy Miller) and then had to go fabric shopping. I love fabric shopping, but it seems I can find endless yards of fabric when I am not yet working on a project. Now if I am hunting for a particular style or color fabric to be used on a project, I am lucky to find one. I ended up buying some fabric at a local quilt shop and some in a quilt shop in another state. Then the fabric my daughter loved from Joann's, was out of stock so I ordered a bolt online.

Auditioning Some Fabrics

I used freezer paper as suggested in the book for making the triangle sections. There are many patterns in the book and the strips use different widths. I decided to use 2 1/2" so I could use my strip die for my Accuquilt cutter. Cutting my strips that way saves time and they are nice and straight. I was having some trouble with the pattern as it really wasn't clear on the strip sizes and the triangle sections were not making a tree skirt that went all the way around, picture a pie with a large piece missing. I hate math, some quilters are great at it but not me. Fortunately my husband is a numbers guy and after I explained the problem I was having, he figured out what size to make the large triangles and drew it out on his cad program to be sure, so it turned out perfect.

I did all the piecing on my vintage Featherweight and it did a beautiful job. Quilting it on the long arm was a bit of a challenge. It is an odd shape to baste on the frame but I was able to get it to work by basting several sections. The overall size is 60" x 60".

Piecing The Tree Skirt

Tree Skirt Pinned and Ready For Basting On The Longarm

It would have been easy to quilt an overall edge to edge on it but I had an idea in my head to do a different motif on each strip, triangle and on point square. The fabric is all busy prints so the quilting blended in after washing. My daughter enjoyed examining the different areas to see what I quilted.

Working On Quilting Each Strip

Quilting Finished And Ready To Come Off The Frame

I normally machine bind my quilts but since this is a tree skirt and the binding will show all the way around the bottom of the tree, I took the time to hand bind it.

This View Shows Binding

The backing is all one fabric, the sparkly pine cone fabric she loves, so if she wants to, she can use the reverse side on top. I did make a label and placed it on the split section on the back. I used the white on white snowflake fabric with green embroidery thread so it blends in really well on the back.

My daughter was thrilled when she opened her Christmas present. She had a lot of excitement in her voice and a hint of happy tears when she saw how it turned out. She called it her heirloom tree skirt. I am so happy she loved it. My husband was sad to see it go, he wants me to make one for us now.   

The Finished Tree Skirt