Stripped Bare for Christmas Action - More Quilted Tree Decs

Back in July we made a cushion to celebrate the Fourth of July, so using the same technique we are going to create some more great quilted decorations to fill your tree.  Yet again we are going to raid the pastry cutter tin to find great shapes to use on the tree, you can use hearts, stockings, hearts, mittens, hearts, parcels and did I mention hearts?  This is another great way of using up scrap strips to create effective tree decs, so let's hit your Christmas stash of fabrics and get started.

You will need:

A selection of Christmas fabric or fabrics in Christmas colours of red and green
Batting
Cutting mat, ruler and rotary cutter
Scissors, pins and thread, pinking shears are optional but really useful
Pastry cutters or artistic ability (which I am sadly lacking), pencil, greaseproof paper
Ribbon or hairy twine (if you are going rustic)
A walking foot
Iron and Ironing Board ... yes, they are back

Choose shapes and designs which are clean and not too complex, hence the heart, mittens, Christmas trees and stockings... but you could use snowmen and gingerbread men (but we are going to be using these shapes to create a garland in a couple of weeks).  If you feel confident in your sketching skills, the draw them directly onto the greaseproof or dressmaker's tissue, otherwise trace around the pastry or cookie cutter shapes.  Set them aside until we have constructed the strips.

You need to cut your strips to the same length but vary the width, don't go thinner than an inch as we are going to use the quilter's classic 1/4" seam allowance... frankly less than 1/2" showing will look like a line of dental floss or what was referred to by my old friend Clint as a greyhound skirt.  If you are using fat quarters use the longest side, usually the 22" side.

Sew the strips together using the 1/4" seam allowance, then iron your work from the back, do not iron the seams open, iron them closed all in the same direction.  Then turn your work so that the front is showing and press again, stretch the work slightly to draw out any excess fabric that may have become trapped.

Place the sewn strips on top of the batting, and pin into place using the longest pins you can find, but leave a good allowance of batting up to an inch around the sewn strips.

Fit your walking foot to your machine... don't worry if you do not have a walking foot, you can still do this but the walking foot will give you a better finish as it ensures that the different textures and thicknesses of fabric will feed through at the same pace. 

Sew in the ditch... don't know where it is?  Remember how we ironed the seams in one direction, you are going to be sewing about an 1/8" away from the seam line through just one layer of fabric and batting, not the three, that is your quilting ditch.  Use a contrasting thread to emphasise your stitching, sew along the ditch of every strip.  When you have completed this, trim away the excess batting.

Pin your pattern pieces onto the quilted fabric, it looks great if the strips match up (yep, sometimes I can get a bit anal about lining up, although you don't have to do this) so remember to reverse it when you cut our the second piece. Or if you want to be economical, use a plain piece of fabric instead of your quilting as it will not be seen.

Place the right sides together and sew around leaving an opening... for the mittens and stockings, leave the top part open.  For the tree, fold over a loop of ribbon, as ever I have raided the ribbon stash for some gorgeous Jane Means ribbons, pin it to the point of your tree on the right side on one piece of your tree, make sure that both ends of the ribbon stick out beyond this point, then lay on the other side of the tree and pin it in to place. For the heart, pop the ribbon loop in the centre of the curves at the top of the heart and use the same method, leaving a gap along the side.

Trim any excess seams and ease the curves by either nipping little triangles around the curves or using pinking shears to achieve this.  Turn the shapes right side out. Use a cool iron to press them into shape - do not use a hot or cotton temperature iron as this will melt/bond the batting.  

With your stockings and mittens, turn under the raw edges and press them into place... for the mittens, join a pair together with one piece of ribbon, tucked into the open seam and pin it together so they look just like the mittens tied into your coat that you could never lose, no matter how hard you tried, they will sit happily over a branch.  For the stockings a loop, pinned at the outside edge of your stockings.  Now sew around your decoration, 1/8" from the edge.

You could make little present shaped decs in squares or rectangle, even I can draw a square or a rectangle (well nearly) by running sewing ribbon in a cross over the square and popping a ribbon in the centre.

And now, a little later than usual, we are actually hopping over to Handmade Monday on a Monday... go look at what is happening in the Craft World :)

Christmas Tutorials Start Here - Chris's Patchwork Decorations

OK, can you believe four months today Christmas Day will be over?  We started a Christmas countdown at this time last year, so throughout the year I have been collecting ideas (and discarding them, too!) ready for the fray.  In fact I have even prepared my very own Christmas list... more of which later, however Christmas is also about presents and to that end, I have two bow makers which I am going to give away to two lucky winners who post on this post by Friday 29 August 2012.

So no more shilly shallying, let's get cracking, you will need:

Paper, pencil, protractor (go on you know you can borrow it from your children's new school set... just to see if it works), a ruler and paper scissors
Christmas fabric scraps
Pins, needle, thread, dressmaking scissors, small sharp scissors
Fish knife
Ribbon or hairy string
Iron and ironing board
Wizard little bowmaker (I will be giving away two, Merry Christmas!)
Stuffing - kapok, polyester filling
Buttons for decoration (optional)

We are going to start with the star, this is a classic six point star used in quilting, yep, you are learning another technique by stealth...  If you want to make the big star which will be 7" wide then start by drawing a line 3" long, for the smaller star which is 5" wide draw a line 2" long.  Now we are going to use our protractor for good (not evil maths), line it up the line at the bottom of your protractor goes along the line you have drawn, at the left hand side mark it at 70' and the right hand side mark it at 110'.  Draw a line up to this point measuring 3" for the big star and 2" for the little star.  Draw a line along the top which will also measure 3" or 2" creating a rhombus, you have just created your pattern template.  You can either use just this one or cut out half a dozen.

Choose six scraps of fabric which sit well together and on which you will be able to cut out two of your templates, iron the fabric.  You need to lay the template so that the longest line through the centre of the template lies along the warp of the fabric (parallel to the selvedge). Pin the template to the material and cut out two diamonds in each fabric. Spend a couple of minutes working out how you want to arrange your star.

Take three of the diamonds, using a 1/4" seam allowance (if your machine does not have markings then use a permanent marker and draw a line a quarter of an inch from where the needle goes down and use this as your guideline).  

Start sewing from the outer edge into the centre but stop 1/4" from the end ... this is really important, otherwise you will not get a sharp pointy star.  I usually use my old and trusty hand Singer so that I have to work at a slower pace and allegedly I will make few mistakes - who is laughing at the back?

Now pin the other side to the middle diamond and sew it as above.  Press the seams open, yes I know this goes against your quilting and patch work principles but you have to have faith in me... just this once.

Do exactly the same for the other side.  When you look at it from the right side, you will see the centre point of the middle diamond 1/4" from the edge ... how clever are you?  Pin the two sides together, ensuring that the points meet in the middle, I do this by putting a pin through the point on one side and then through the point on the other side to make sure that they meet exactly.  If when you sew it together they do not sit correctly, undo it an start again, otherwise it will annoy you forever and it will only take a couple of minutes to correct it.  Iron open the seams down the centre.

Next we are going to create the back using the same technique, however don't lay it out with both sides laying face up as the arrangement will not work ... believe me, I did it ... twice!  What you need to do is lay the completed star right side down and place the matching diamonds on top, with right sides uppermost.

Repeat the steps we took to create the first star.

Take your ribbon, I visited my ribbon stash and found some festive red ribbon from Jane Means, fold it so that the loop of the ribbon reaches the mid-point of the star and make it about 8" for the large star and 6" for the small star (you may want to adjust this to suit your decorating scheme).

Take one side of the star, lay it face up, choose which point is going to be uppermost and fold the ribbon in two with the two ends lying over the point of the star, pin them in place.  Take the other star and place it on top, pin it in place but leave a gap on one of the sides as we will turn the star inside out through this aperture.  Sew the star together.

Trim the excess fabric from over each point and turn the star inside out, use the fishknife to poke up into the points to make them really sharp.  Start to fill the star with stuffing,  do this by using small amounts, I know it is tempting to ram it all in to save time but this will give you an uneven lumpy filling, so small and often is the way.

 

Pin the open sides together and slip stitch (this is a small diagonal stitch) them together with a matching thread.

To make your bows, put two dowels in the holes for the size of bow that you want.  Run the ribbon round the back of the dowels and take the left hand ribbon towards the right dowel.

Next take the right hand ribbon over the top of the left ribbon and round under the back ribbon and bring it back over the top to the front.  

Make a loop by bringing the the left hand ribbon over to the left hand side.  

Thread the right hand through the loop, pull both ends until you are happy.  Slip it off the dowels and gussy it up... now you have perfect bows every time.

I have two of these little gadgets to give away to two posters who leave feedback and I will announce the winners on Friday 29 August.

For some reason the smaller stars look better with a couple of buttons sewn through the middle, use two buttons so that the star will look good from each side when you see it on the tree.

You will have noticed that I also made a heart, yep we are doing a bogoff on techniques this week, we are going to do some crazy patchwork.  I bet that you have in your fabric stash, bits of fabric that are too small to do anything with yet, you cannot bear to throw away and that is what we are going to use.  After cutting out the diamonds we are left with odd shaped bits and we can make use of those.

Remember how we made a heart template earlier this year from a biscuit cutter, either use that or cut out a new template.

Find a small square of fabric and sew another piece to one of the side, repeat this with square shapes and triangles until you have sewn together enough to cover your heart template... once this is done you are officially the Dolly Parton's mum of patchwork with your very own fabric of many colours, just like her mother made!

Pin the heart template to your patchwork and cut out the heart. 

Repeat for the other side.

Now you can leave it like this but I remembered a fantastic crazy patchwork tea cosy that my mum had which was made of velvet and silk scraps which had herringbone embroidery joining them together, so I used the herringbone stitch on my machine using a contrasting thread to sew over all the seams.

Insert the ribbon loop in the same way that we did with the star, pin the heart together with right sides facing and leave a gap on one of the sides so that you can turn the heart inside out.  Once you have sewn it together, ease the curves by cutting little notches into the curves so that the fabric will not bunch and pucker.  

Turn the heart right side out, using the fish knife to get that lovely point at the base.  Stuff the heart with small amounts of stuffing until it is filled to your satisfaction and slip stitch the opening shut.  Add a bow to the bottom of the loop and now you have another Christmas decoration for your tree.

Don't forget to pop by on Friday to see if you are one of the winners.

And now is the time to go and look at Handmade Monday... and just think with it being a Bank Holiday weekend you will have plenty of time to kick back and enjoy it all

For those of you who are wondering why these are Chris's Christmas decorations, well they are for my brother who as a little boy always referred to decorations as decormorations... although I still feel his greatest skill was walking down our stairs head first on his hands, do you think 50+ is possibly too old to try this?