Materials: Hrm.  Oh boy.  I’m afraid to try and make a list, because I’d no doubt forget something, so let’s just say the usual quilting suspects: a bunch of Christmas-type prints from Fabricville, plus thread, batting, stabilizer, fusible web, and bias binding.

Time: 6 months, nearly all of which was spent lying dormant.

Cost: $50-ish.

Never let it be said that I am not seasonally appropriate.  In celebration of this lovely June day, I bring you: a Christmas tree skirt!

The genesis for this project, of course, goes way back to the first time I saw that Target was charging way too much money for some seriously ugly tree skirts.  I heard the dreaded words escape my mouth–”I could make that!”–and so, several years later, I have.  Note that I make no claims of speed or efficiency.

Long period of dormancy aside, this was actually a really easy project.  Here’s the secret: quilt applique requires all the finesse of cutting out pieces of construction paper and pasting them onto another piece of construction paper.  It’s really, really easy.  For this project, I stocked up on a bunch of Christmas prints when I saw them in the store at the beginning of December, and kind of improvised a pattern.  It actually turned out quite well, if I do say so myself, but it was also a pretty low-stakes project: it’s just a tree skirt, you know?  All it needs is to be moderately cat-proof.

For the quilting, I free-handed swirly trails of clear thread down from the top, and tied iridescent sequins onto the end.  Get it?  Like snowflakes?  Oh, never mind.

Here, you can see the back, which is in a glittery flannel.  Clearly, Garth approves.  He just can’t wait ’till December.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm and is filed under diy, projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.