Christmas Tree Wall Hanging

Once again I saw something on someone's blog, maybe it was a pattern, or someone's picture on a quilting board, but I saved a picture of a primitive Christmas tree that I really liked. I I kept thinking about it - and the other day I decided I wanted to make it - NOW!! I'm impulsive like that..... to the right is the inspiration piece.



I discovered it was a tree in a Leisure Arts book of wall hangings. Since I didn't have time to get the book and get the wall hanging done, I decided to do my own style.

This is 30 X 11 inches. I first took a 26 X 7 inch piece of muslin and layered it over batting and muslin backing. I then sewed down 2.5 inch strips of the border fabric, flipping and pressing each piece in turn. This secured all 3 layers together.
Next I picked out several green pieces of scrap and applied Wonder-Under to each of the wrong sides. With a pair of scissors I cut random 'layers' of each and began layering them on the top. I also had a piece of tone on tone brown that I used for the trunk and bits in between the branch layers. I found a bit of gold to use for the star.


Once I had everything where I wanted them, I removed the paper backing of the fusible and fused it all down.


Simple and quick zig-zag machine quilting secured the pieces and accented the edges. My machine skipped and wandered in a couple of places but I left it - adding to the prim look of the piece.



I used gold metalic thread around the star.
Two bias strips of the border fabric were used in the upper corners of the back so it could hang easily.
Binding was cut and applied and it was finished!

Though I like how it turned out - I want to change it up some too. I think I might make a companion piece or two with some of the remaining pieces....maybe try to get closer to the inspiration piece.  Those will have to wait for now though....I've put off cleaning the house too long already!!

I couldn't help myself when I noticed all the small scraps of the above project - so I began cutting them into little pie shaped pieces and assembled them on another panel of muslin, fused, satin stitched them down and echo quilted them for this cute little mini forest.  It became a gift to my twin.

Christmas Table Topper

I saw a show from Quilt in a day for a small wall hanging. Later as I was looking through some of my Christmas fabrics I found some Santa fabric that just called to me to be fussy cut. This is the result.

Most of it is machine quilted in the Quilt as you go style with gold metalic stitches through the 4-patches and criss-crossed in the middle square.

There are 9 pieces that were layered and quilted, then all were put together with the green sashing/joining strips. It was super easy to do. The 4 patches were made first - with the decorative stitches along the seam lines creating the quilting.

The Santa squares were centered on top of the batting and backing and the white frame was added via the stitch and flip method, then the corner triangles were added. I lost a tiny bit of the points on the frames, so next time I will make the frames a bit smaller to prevent this.

I think it needs a bit more quilting to help it lay good and flat so I will probably add some hand quilting too - but later. I'm thinking some hand quilting on the white frames around each Santa, and maybe even some squares inside each of the 4-patches.

12 days of Christmas

The 12 days of Christmas was an early tradition in my hubby's and our family. At the time, we had aunts and uncles enough that we each drew a name out of the hat and that was to be our part in singing "The 12 days of Christmas". Ages ranged from the 70's down to our youngest who then was about 6 or 8 years old. We had a lot of laughs as Aunt Eleanor, Uncle Buddy, or our young ones would miss their cue for their part, or even forget their part all-together. But each year we made it through and were only then rewarded with being able to open our gifts.


When I discovered that Nancy Halvorsen had designed this panel - well I knew I had to have it to remind me of our past tradition.

I am gradually embellishing the panels with crystals, beads, buttons and stitching, and imagine each year (for a while anyway) will be adding to this panel.

I have since discovered that Shelly Rasche has also designed a panel.  I may have to try to find that one as well.