No Naked Christmas Trees Here

That's right, folks. I've finished a skirt for our tree, so it won't be quite so bare beneath it this year.

 

For the blocks, I used my Double Diamond 4-Patch Tutorial and 24 charm squares from a 12 Days of Christmas charm pack I've been hoarding saving for the right project. The background is Kona Snow scraps leftover from various projects. For the basic setting/design, I followed Tracey's tree skirt tutorial on Moda Bake Shop.

I had to keep telling myself that this project definitely did not need to be close to perfect, since it will be overshadowed by a tree in a dark corner of our family room, and then later covered by gifts. It's a good thing, too. The machine binding nearly drove me up the wall. Between the round opening for the tree trunk in the middle and the wide angles, I was pretty far outside my comfort zone. But I soldiered on. And you can't really tell, can you?

If you find yourself cursing stressing over binding odd angles, Heather Peterson has a couple of useful tutorials for binding both inside and outside angles. In particular, I read over the outside angle tutorial a few times to work up courage to before binding the skirt. 

I still have some charms left over from this project, so I'm thinking about making a couple of throw pillows for the couch. They'll even coordinate with the 12 Days of Christmas quilt I made last year. Even though I've never participated, I've been browsing the Pillow Talk Swap group on flickr to get some ideas. Inspiration overload much?

Vital Stats:

Started: November 2011

Finished: November 2011

Machine-pieced, machine-quilted, machine-bound

Fabrics used: Kona Snow, 12 Days of Christmas by Kate Spain for Moda

I'm linking up to the Sew Cal Gal Christmas show for this year. Be sure to stop by and check out other folks' Christmas quilts!