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 :)

No Sew Quilted Ball - Christmas Tutorial No 3

I have noticed recently that when I post up tutorials, people post that although they like it, they cannot sew, knit or crochet... so this week, you have no excuse all you need to do is pin  and push.  I need to thank the ladies of the Quilting Board in the US for pointing me in the direction of this technique... I had seen these balls before but thought that they looked really complicated but they are not, but when you make them and are asked how, just nod knowingly and say it is all down to technique when you make an eight point star Christmas ball!

You will need:

Three toning fabrics
Pins... lots of pins as these are our secret weapon
Rotary cutter, ruler and mat
3" polystyrene ball
Ribbon

Cut your fabric into 3" squares, 8 squares for the top of your ball and then two lots of 16 for the second and third row. Split into two piles of four top squares and eight each of the other fabrics.

Now I believe  you did not know that you could press fabric with your fingers?  Well that is what we are going to do next, we need to find the centre point of the square, you can do this by just folding the fabric in half along each side or if you are feeling flash across the diagonal.
Determine where the top of your ball is, put a pin in the centre of the wrong side of your fabric and stab it into the top of your ball.  

Fold it into a triangle (your pin will be in the centre of its longest side), pin the top of the triangle down

Now fold over the left point and then the right into centre and pin it down to create a diamond shape, pin the each of the sides into the ball.

Repeat it three more times to create a square.

For the next layer, pin the first triangle 5/8" down and in between your diamonds... 

I used the end of a tape measure to place the pin, repeat the folds as you did for the first layer for four diamonds.  Now if you are frugal like me, you will notice that often diamonds overlap so capture two sides with one pin.

Now, we are going to in fill between these diamonds by putting the pin in between the fold of the first row of diamonds and working the diamonds as you did before... if your fingers are feeling a bit sore then use a thimble to help you press the pins home, especially when you are working through so many layers of fabric.

On the third layer, I decided that rather than make each layer the same size, I would use the second row, just to outline a star. For the third row, you repeat what you did for the second row but instead of coming down 5/8" just come down 1/4".

When you have completed the top half, turn the ball over and repeat the steps above, to make sure that the halves match, align your first quarter fold with the folds of the completed half.

Trim the excess fabric from around the centre of the ball.  I realise it looks rather grim at this point but we are going to hide it all under a ribbon.

I used two lots of ribbon, a satin ribbon to cover the exposed edges and some Jane Means grosgrain ribbon to accent my decoration.  (BTW, Jane has recently started her own blog, which is well worth a peek) Start by creating a loop from which you will hang your dec.  Take your satin ribbon, pin it into the ball run the ribbon around the ball.

Do not pin the end of the satin ribbon down yet, instead take the loop from which you will hang the ball and pin it across the satin ribbon.  Next place the end of the satin ribbon to cover the base of the loop, fold the end underneath to give you a neat finish and pin the end in place with four pins at each corner to make sure that the loop is held securely in place and will not bounce off your tree :) 

Next tie a bow... and now I admit it, I lied to you, you are going to need to stitch the bow onto the loop, but if you are really stitch phobic, you can use a glue gun to stick it onto the loop.

And there you have it, your very own quilted Christmas star... that was soooo technically difficult to make!

So I am actually posting this on a Monday morning, ready for Wendy's Handmade Monday... so in between watching our wonderful Olympic athletes parade through London do take a look and see what everyone has been up to over the past week.