August Minis and More

Hello Everyone! Today is the monthly Minis and More Parade. This month Michele is showing the parade solo as Sherri is out of town teaching. July’s theme was of course, Christmas in July!

For my entry, I finished the Charm Pack Christmas Tree Skirt by Fat Quarter Shop. This pattern really was easy to make. I have about three other tree skirt patterns that I have bought over the years, but never made any of them. I made the tree skirt I’m using now in 1982. I was going to take a picture, but it is buried so deep in the Christmas boxes that I couldn’t get it out. I tried to find a picture of it, but it is always covered with presents. But trust me, it has needed to be replaced for a long time. I made it using pre-quilted fabrics, no backing and store bought binding. I’m pretty sure I used a pattern because it is wedge-shaped. Anyway, I needed a new one and I think this one is going to be perfect.

My only issue with the pattern is the corners on the inside when attaching the binding. Because I wanted to machine sew the binding down, I attached it from the back, then when I got to those inside corners, everything was backwards. I ended up using a spool of thread to mark a curve at the corners, then work the binding around them. It looks fine, but there was no info in the pattern or in the Fat Quarter Shops tutorial on how to handle them. If you decide to make this and make the cut out round, then the binding will have to be cut on the bias. I think if I sewed the binding on from the top, it would have been okay.

I didn’t want to spend a lot of time quilting the tree skirt because it will be covered most of the time. I marked all the straight lines with the Hera marker so I wouldn’t have to remove any markings. This worked out well and even though I used my walking foot, there wasn’t that much turning of the quilt.

I did think that there was just too much white space in the middle, so I had to do a little free motion quilting. I quilted overlapping ribbon candy in the center, just for fun.

Instead of using a charm pack, I used a layer cake of Vintage Holiday by Bonnie and Camille for Moda. I chose the number of charm squares divided by two, and cut the layer cake pieces in half. So it’s not totally scrappy because I have two of each square. I also used four of the layer cake pieces to make the inside. I saved the piece that was cut out to make a mug rug with it. Fat Quarter Shop had the red fabric from the Vintage Holiday fabric line on sale that I used for the backing. I used Quilter’s Dream 80/20 batting and my favorite 2800 Aurifil 50 wt thread for the quilting. Although it’s hard to see in the pictures, I used Urban Chiks Spotted fabric for the background. It’s getting to be right up there with Moda Grunge fabrics as a favorite for backgrounds.

I was able to pull a few things out to get a “Christmassy” picture. That’s one of my tomato cage Christmas trees that I made years and years ago, before you could buy them that size.

Little House Needleworks, Jack’s Tree Farm, Part 3.

I also finished Jack’s Tree Farm, Part 3. I was glad this was a pretty quick one to stitch!

It looks good on top of the red plaid (Timeless Treasure fabric) I purchase last week. I started another square on Farmhouse Christmas, but unfortunately, I didn’t meet my goal of getting another block finished in July.

There’s still time to sign up for Jacquelynne Steves’ Happy Little Things BOM. We start with the first block on Monday. This is a cute one!

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll be back on Monday, August 5 with the first block of Happy Little Things.