Quick DIY Apple Pencil Holder + Progress on 1984 Sampler Custom Quilting

 Oh my gosh, you guys!  I completed a whole sewing project from start to finish last night in under an hour!  This is what it must feel like to own a sewing machine but NOT be a quilter!!  

A Sewing Project Completed Start to Finish in Under an Hour!

This is something I’ve been “fixing to do” for a couple of years now, just “waiting to get a round tuit” that never arrived…  No pattern; just eyeballed an old, stretched out elastic contraption that needed replacing and replicated it with some purple elastic from my garment supply stash and a little piece of jacquard ribbon to make it pretty.  This elastic strap slips on and off over my iPad case quickly and easily and has a channel stitched to securely hold my Apple Pencil.

I even used one of the high tech gizmos on the new B 990 sewing machine.  When top stitching my ribbon in place with Edgestitch Foot #10D, I turned on the laser that shows exactly where my needle is positioned to stitch on my project; see that red dot below on the black ribbon?

B 990 Laser Helps Position Edge Stitching

On previous machines, I would have tried out different out of center needle positions one click at a time, lowering the needle to see how far I was about to stitch from the edge, but it was faster (and more fun) to just turn on the red laser dot.  One, two clicks to the left, looks perfect, GO!  I only turned the laser on to select my needle position; did not leave it on for sewing.  I used two different utility stitches, the three step zigzag stitch to overcast the raw cut edges of my elastic to prevent fraying with use, and the triple straight stitch around my ribbon flower and along the edges of the long, skinny pocket for holding the Apple Pencil.  I used Mettler Metrosene all-purpose polyester thread and a Schmetz Stretch needle in size 90.  I wish I had a closer thread color match to the color of my elastic, but I wanted a strong poly thread for durability and I don’t have anywhere near the stash of colors in all purpose poly that I have for quilting, appliqué, embroidery etc.  This was an impulse project chosen primarily so I could procrastinate packing for my trip.  

Maybe I should do more projects that don’t take 6 years to finish?  

Speaking of projects that take years to finish…  I did get a bit more quilting done on Marybeth’s 1984 WIP sampler quilt this week.  I added some hand guided ruler work quilting to the three blocks that I quilted with computerized designs the last time I posted about this project:

Continuous Curves Ruler Quilting Added Around Digital Block Design

My hand guided quilting is nowhere near as nice as the computerized design but the block looked unfinished to me before.  I’m doing the best I can but it’s a learning process and if I keeping stopping to rip out quilting and redo it, I’ll never get the quilt back to Marybeth!  

There's a Design Wall in My Hallway Full of Deco Blocks! But it Looks, Umm, ROUGH...

First, the good news: there's a 96" x 96" design wall in my hallway across from the entrance to my sewing room, and my Deco Quilt blocks are up on the wall.  Hooray!  This is the project-in-progress that was on the design wall in my old studio in North Carolina right before I had to pack everything up and move to Florida this past December.  It's good to see those blocks out again, especially since now I can see the progress I made working on additional blocks here and there throughout the move.  Woot woot!

My Scandi Deco Bed Quilt Blocks Are Up on My Brand-New Design Wall

Now for the bad news: this new design wall did not turn out anywhere near as nice as the old one, and it's going to require immediate revision.  For one thing, we shouldn't have put it up so high -- my fault entirely, as I thought it might be nice to be able to plug a vacuum cleaner into the bottom outlet socket.  We should move it down to completely cover the outlet so it's centered nicely from top to bottom the way it's centered from side to side.

Bernie Said "Quick, Cover It Up With Your Quilt Blocks!"

Actually, what Bernie said was "I KNEW it was going to look like crap.  Cover it up with your quilt blocks so I don't have to look at it."  

Studio Tour: Let There Be Light! And Also, Thread! Upgrades From My Sweetie

You guys, I am SO EXCITED about the wire cable track lighting that my husband installed above my new Bernina long arm last night!  I LOVE IT! 💕💕💕

Wire Cable Track Lighting Installed Above My New Q24

The Bernina Q24 has plenty of bright LED lighting along the throat of the machine head itself, but I wanted the entire length of the frame lit up from one side to the other so I can inspect each section of a quilt as I'm advancing it on the frame.  Bright task lighting enables me to find and remove any pet fur or stray threads before they get quilted in, and makes it easier to notice things like open seams that my hopping foot could catch in if I didn't see them ahead of time.

Bright Lighting Helps Me Spot Problems Like This Open Seam

That photo above with an open seam was my own kaleidoscope quilt, by the way -- I am not a perfect piecer, either!  (When I see something like that as I'm quilting, I like to mark it with a hand stitched tailor tack in contrasting thread so it's easier to find it later when I want to hand stitch that spot closed).

Order In the Studio: DIY Wall Mounted Racks for Longarm Quilting Rulers

Good morning, and happy Thursday, everyone!  Thanks to my blog-reader-friend Diane in Texas, SAMWISE LEARNED HOW TO GO DOWN THE STAIRS YESTERDAY!!!  After reading my post about how I was carrying my 50-pound Rottweiler puppy down a flight of stairs every morning, Diane emailed me with step-by-step training instructions to get Samwise over his fear of the stairs, and they worked like a charm.  It took me all of 5 minutes, y'all, and this morning he came down the stairs all on his own.  I am eternally grateful, Diane, and so is my back!!

On to the Quilty Goodness...  I have been wanting to show you guys the wall-mounted ruler racks that my husband made me for Christmas, and since I haven't got any sewing progress to share with you, today is the day for the DIY Ruler Rack post!

Inspiration: Lisa Calle's Ruler Racks, shown on her blog here

I first saw racks like these on Lisa Calle's blog, Living On a Thread, in her post about setting up her quilting studio in her new home.  If Lisa had these for sale in her online shop, I would have just ordered them from her -- but when I asked her about them, she said that a friend made them for her and it's not an item she sells.  I searched Amazon, did some google searches, and still could not find anyone selling racks like these, so I begged and pleaded with my husband to make them for me.  Anyone who develops a ruler addiction will understand that it's not just owning the right ruler for the quilting task at hand that matters -- it's REMEMBERING which rulers you own, and being able to survey your options and quickly put your hand on the right ruler right when you need it!

Here's what you -- or a handy woodworker who loves you -- will need to make racks like these for your studio:

DIY Ruler Racks for Longarm Quilting Rulers

Gather Your Supplies:

• 4' long 2x4 of wood, one per rack

• 3" toggle bolts

• sandpaper

• mineral oil

Rebecca's Ruler Racks

Making the Ruler Racks:

1. Mark evenly spaced lines on your boards, approximately 1 3/4" to 2" apart
2. With a table saw (or a sliding miter saw, if you don't have a table saw), cut grooves into the board at each line that you marked.  My grooves are cut at a 31.6 degree angle and go approximately 1" deep into the boards.  Make sure the groove is slightly wider than the 1/4" thickness of your rulers, so they don't get scuffed up when you take them in and out of the board.
3. Sand the board smooth with the sandpaper
4. Rub all sides of the boards with mineral oil to make them look pretty and to protect the wood from drying out
5. Drill through your board about 8-10" in from each end
6. Mount to your wall near your longarm machine with toggle bolts through the pre-drilled holes (the toggle bolts will safely hold the weight of the racks on drywall even if you don't have a stud in the exact location where you want your racks)

Lisa's racks look beautiful in the dark stain finish, but I preferred the mineral oil finish for my studio.  The light, natural finish of my racks looks better with my maple butcher block cutting table, plus the mineral oil doesn't need time to cure like a varnish or stain.  I wanted my racks to be installed and filled with rulers ASAP, without having to worry about not-quite-dried stain making my rulers stick in the grooves.

Bernie actually made four of these racks for me, but I only have enough rulers for three of them (so far...)!

Although I've been doing more piecing than quilting lately, I did buy some more nifty longarm rulers, and I'm looking forward to trying them out on a real quilt soon!  When I first purchased my longarm machine, I ordered some rulers from The Gadget Girls that I thought would be useful.  These are the yellow ones you see on my ruler racks.  First attempts to use them were comical, though -- this was before I'd taken any classes on quilting with rulers and I didn't know anything about where to position my hands for the best control of the ruler or using anything on the back of the rulers to keep them from sliding around while I was stitching!  Also, the rulers I ordered initially weren't as versatile as I thought they would be -- the clam shell ruler only makes clam shells in one size, for instance, whereas clam shell quilting can easily be accomplished with circle templates that are easier to control and can be used for so many other things.  

So, after taking hands-on ruler work classes with both Lisa Calle and Judi Madsen at the Paducah AQS show last Spring, I had a few rulers that were included with my kit fee for the classes.  It was great to be able to test those rulers in class, learn how to use them successfully, and know for sure that they would work for me before committing to purchasing an entire range of sizes.  These rulers/templates are just 1/4" thick etched acrylic, but they are pricier than you'd think -- probably because they are made in relatively small quantities for small businesses serving a niche market.  Some of those yellow Gadget Girls specialty rulers I played with probably work well for what they're designed to do, but I need to find a good tutorial for using them!  I really liked Lisa Calle's Quilter's Groove circle and arc rulers after using them in class, so I purchased them in every size she offers.  That way I'll always have the exact size I need, no matter what I'm working on.  

Quilter's Groove Pro Circle Templates, available here

I'm thinking of using those circles to quilt a Baptist Fan design in the center of my Pineapple Log Cabin quilt.  Not sure what to do with the borders, though.  I can also use them for clam shell quilting, wreaths, etc.  I really like the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal reference lines on the Quilter's Groove Pro Circles.

The Pro Echo arcs, also from Quilter's Groove, can be used for everything from curved crosshatching to border designs.  Lisa's YouTube channel has lots of great videos for how to use her rulers, and she also has an online ruler work class on the iQuilt platform.

Quilter's Groove Pro Echo Rulers, available here.

My most recent ruler purchase was Bethanne Nemesh's Garden Lines collection of rulers: two different French curve rulers, a nifty little applique ruler, a long point-to-point or stitch-in-the-ditch ruler, and a pair of small multipurpose rulers for stitch-in-the-ditch and continuous curve quilting within pieced blocks.

Bethanne Nemesh's Garden Lines Ruler Collection, available here

I also purchased the two larger French curve rulers that Bethanne released more recently, the Lily 3 and Long Lines rulers:

Bethanne Nemesh's Lily 3 and Long Lines set, available here

Not only can I use the French curve rulers for creating identical, symmetrical feather spines, but there are so many other cool ideas for using them in Bethanne's video tutorials.  Seriously; those video tutorials are a huge selling point for me, because any ruler is more useful when you understand how to use it, what it was designed to do, and how the various markings are intended to be used.  After successfully quilting Lars's Mission Impossible graduation quilt with a DIY custom curve ruler and two basic straight edge rulers, I feel MUCH more confident now about what I can do with my longarm machine when I can guide my hopping foot along the edge of a 1/4" thick acrylic template to ensure a smooth line of stitching.  So much easier than free motion or even following a pantograph, in my own limited experience, and that's what encouraged me to splurge on a complete arsenal of the basics.  

These rulers are going to be so much fun to play with on my quilts!  I'm linking this post with:

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

·       Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts

Mission Impossible: Marked and Loaded, With 11 Days Left to Quilt, Label and Bind

Mission Impossible is an appropriate name for this quilt on SO many levels.  It's a high school graduation quilt for my oldest son Lars and it's "due" to the church office in ELEVEN days (on May 26th).  I decided yesterday that I am totally okay with missing that deadline if it comes to that.  The Quillow Service at church isn't until June 9th, two weeks after that deadline, and that's the date that's more important to me.  So I'm adjusting that May 26th "deadline" to an Aspirational Goal, like how we "shoot for the stars, because even if we miss, we'll land on the moon."  

I wanted to document what I've done so far, but I need to keep this SHORT and SWEET so I can get back to this quilt...

So, Mission Impossible is FINALLY on my quilting frame today:

Mission Impossible is On My Frame!

It's centered, smoothed, and positioned but not basted or attached in any way yet.  This loading method is called "fully floating" the quilt top because I'm not using the quilt top roller at all; that's why I've wrapped painter's tape around it, to keep its canvas leader edge from flapping around and annoying me as I'm working.  I know; you're not impressed, right?  I shared my quilting design for this top nine days ago, thinking I was ready to load the quilt and get started. 

I dealt with the dilemma of the backing fabric print being off grain by disregarding the fabric grain and cutting the fabric on the pattern, which was printed at a ninety degree angle to the selvages.  It's just that the grain of the fabric wasn't perfectly straight when it was printed.  And I'm happy with that choice, because crooked lines of text across the back of my quilt would have really bothered me, and the backing fabric rolled up nice and straight and smooth this way, which is really all that matters.

Backing Loaded

In Lisa Calle's Meet and Greet the Longarm class at Paducah Quilt Week, she told us that she rolls her backing all the way up on her pickup roller after pinning it on and then rolls it back onto the quilt backing roller before loading the batting and the quilt top.  That's how I did it this time, and I love how that extra step ensured that my backing fabric was rolled onto the backing roller perfectly smooth with even tension all the way versus me just rolling, smoothing, and twisting it onto the backing roller by hand.  In the photo above, I'm in the process of rolling the backing back onto the backing roller and I stopped to take my photo when I got to the backing seam, perfectly straight along the roller bar.  If you click on that photo to make it bigger, you can admire (or roll your eyes) at how carefully I matched the pattern at the seam line so the stripes of text flow across the backing without a "hiccup" at the seam."  

Why am I loading this 72" x 96" XL Twin (college dorm bed size) quilt sideways on my frame instead of loading and quilting it right side up?

1. Because I can.  That's one of the reasons a 12' frame is so useful, and not just for King quilts.  By pinning the longest sides of my quilt to the frame rather than the shortest sides, I can minimize how many times I have to stop, advance the quilt, smooth everything out, and baste the edges before I can get back to quilting.
2. So my backing seam runs parallel to the roller.  If I'd pinned the top (short end) of the backing to my rollers, that backing seam would have been winding up on itself around the roller, creating a lump and not rolling as tight as the rest of the backing.
3. Loading the quilt sideways is going to minimize how much of my quilt top and batting will be hanging down onto the floor while I'm quilting.  I don't like ANY of it hanging onto the floor, but I don't know of any other solution for the batting.  If I did a "partial float" loading method, my quilt top would be pinned and rolled up onto that quilt top roller (the one I've got the blue tape on), but in my EXTREMELY LIMITED longarm quilting experience thus far I've been more successful when I've fully floated the tops, not attaching them to that bar at all.  I'm sticking with what I'm comfortable with right not, so the quilt top needs to hang down at the front of the frame.  I've created a barricade in my hallway to keep my dogs out temporarily, and that will minimize how much dog fur gets on the quilt (and stuck to the batting inside the quilt).
4. However, I would NOT be able to load the quilt this way if I was quilting it with a directional paper pantograph design that I wanted to appear right side up on the quilt.  Like if it was a line of little ducks, and I wanted those ducks to be right side up on the quilt.  

After loading the backing fabric, the next step was to position my batting on top of the backing fabric and baste it in place along the top edge.  That basting line was sewn with my channel locks engaged to ensure that it's a perfectly straight line.

Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly Quilt Batting Basted to the Backing Along Top Edge

I'm using Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly Quilt batting in Black because my quilt top fabrics are so dark.  I've used this black batting twice before, for my Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight quilt and again for my Math Is Beautiful quilt, and I really like it.  In the same way that a cream-colored natural cotton batting (rather than a bleached white batting) behind a mostly white quilt top can make the whites appear dingy, a white or ivory batting behind a black or very dark quilt top can make the dark fabrics look a little faded right off the bat (pun intended)!  Moreover, longarm machines leave larger holes than hand needles or the machine quilting needles that work successfully on a domestic sewing machine, and those needle holes would be much more obvious if white batting was showing through at the needle holes rather than black.  Finally, although I don't expect to have bearding issues with a quality 80/20 Hobbs batting, any batting fibers that do migrate through to the front or back of the quilt over time are going to be much less obvious if they are black fibers on a deep eggplant purple fabric rather than white fibers.  I purchased 2 1/4 yards of 108" wide batting and oversized my backing fabric as well, to give me plenty of room on each side of my quilting frame to throw a scrap of fabric down and check my tension throughout the quilting process.    Normally you wouldn't need that much excess batting and backing at the sides, but I'm a newbie at this AND I suspect that I may have an issue with my upper thread tension assembly not working correctly, so I'll be doing lots of double checking throughout this quilt.  (Once Mission Impossible is finished, I'll call the awesome folks at APQS support and figure out what's going on with my upper tension).

Okay, so the backing and batting were on the frame; now I just had to toss the quilt top on and fire up the machine, right?  Wrong.  Here's the quilting design that I came up with -- and fell in love with, and have my heart set on quilting:

My Grand Quilting Plan, Sketched Out on My iPad

I knew I had to mark some of those quilting lines prior to loading, but I ended up spending something like 8 or 9 hours over several days marking ALL of the quilting lines.  Christa Smith of Cottonberry Quilts, a wonderful professional longarm quilter whom I've met through the Charlotte Quilters Guild, suggested a  brilliant tweak to my original design, adding a quarter inch echo beyond the edges of the flying geese arcs.  Not only will that help to emphasize my geese circles, but it will also give me a path to travel from one straight line to the next where my purple quilting thread stays on my purple background fabric rather than having to travel right in the ditch, on top of or precariously close to the yellow and green triangles.  So the first thing I did was to mark those arc echoes with the custom 1/4" acrylic template that my husband cut for me:

My Sweetie Made Me a Custom Longarm Ruler!

How awesome is THAT?!  I shifted my acrylic template slightly off of the patchwork beneath to ensure you could see it in the photo, but it's an exact match on those inner and outer curves.  I would not be able to use any of the commercially available longarm rulers for this because my design is not based on symmetrical arcs that come from perfect circles.  And I definitely have not developed the skill of just freehand echoing a curve on the longarm yet, so I would not have even attempted this without a template.  

How to Make a DIY Custom Acrylic Quilting Ruler for Less than $20

Since I designed the quilt in EQ8 software, I used my software to print the entire quilt block at actual size onto cardstock.  Then I cut out the flying geese arc portion of the block right on the seamlines, with no seam allowances.  I used double-stick Scotch tape to secure my cardstock template to a quarter inch thick sheet of acrylic plexiglass (you can get them on Amazon here if you can't find a small enough piece at your local home improvement store), and my husband then cut it out with a jigsaw using a special acrylic blade.  A blade designed for cutting plastic has smaller teeth spaced closer together than a regular blade, and it's crucial for getting a smooth edge.  

My Husband Bernie, Cutting Out My Acrylic Templates With His Jigsaw

Success!

I cannot tell you how excited I am that this worked.  Seriously!!  That sheet of 1/4" thick acrylic that we ordered from Amazon cost something like $12 with free Prime shipping, and from that one piece we were able to cut two templates with seam allowances that I used to rotary cut the purple background pieces for my quilt blocks, plus Bernie was able to cut my quilting template from the leftover scrap.  I mean, where can you get three acrylic quilting rulers for $12?!

My Custom Acrylic Templates for Rotary Cutting

Rotary Cutting These Custom Shapes Was a Huge Time Saver

Of course, the rotary cutting rulers and templates you buy in stores are only 1/8" thick, whereas mine are 1/4" thick.  Bernie didn't want to try cutting acrylic thinner than 1/8" because he was concerned that it would shatter, but I had no trouble cutting these gentle curves with my 45 mm rotary cutter despite the thicker acrylic.  And 1/4" thick is PERFECT for templates and rulers that you're using for machine quilting, because that thickness prevents the acrylic template from sliding under your hopping foot while you're stitching.

Now, I'll still opt for a commercially made quilting ruler when there's one available because those are precision cut with lasers, perfectly smooth, and etched with lines and markings that help you position them accurately on your quilt.  Still, knowing my sweetie can cut custom shapes like this for me opens up a whole new world of possibilities!

Marking Arc Echoes With My Custom Quilting Ruler

So, back to Mission Impossible.  After marking the curved arc echoes on my quilt top with a SewLine mechanical fabric pencil, I used a 5' drapery workroom ruler (similar to this Creative Grids acrylic yard stick) to mark the diamonds with straight lines coming off the block corners.  The diagonal line that goes through each of the flying geese circles is nearly 34" long, which is why it needed to be marked on the quilt prior to loading it.  I continued using the SewLine pencils because I like the clear, thin line they create that doesn't smudge with handling the way regular chalk pencil would do.

Then I used a 24.5" long Creative Grids acrylic ruler to mark my 1/4" echo lines just inside those intersecting diagonal lines, and I'm VERY GLAD I was marking this ahead of time because I messed up and drew the lines on the wrong sides the first time.  It's so much easier to remove chalk lines than it is to rip out quilting stitches!  And that mistake is what convinced me to mark ALL of my lines on the quilt before loading it.  Once the quilt is on the frame and I can only see a 26" swath or so at a time, it would be even easier to accidentally mess up my design if it wasn't premarked.  I bought a cool marking ruler from Judi Madsen at her longarm ruler work class at Paducah Quilt Week, and I am so glad I did because it made it so much faster and easier to get those perfectly spaced 1/2" lines marked inside the diamonds.  It's called the QuickMark Assist Ruler, it's 1/8" thick so it's for marking only (NOT for quilting!), and you can get it on Judi's Green Fairy Quilting web site here:

Marking Half Inch Lines With Judi Madsen's QuickMark Assist Ruler

I switched to my White Clover Marking Pen at this point (the kind that is supposed to disappear when you iron it) because the tip of the mechanical SewLine pencil didn't fit well in the skinny ruler grooves and the point kept snapping off.  Normally, I hate the White Clover Pen because the ink doesn't show up immediately when you draw the line -- there's a delay of a couple seconds before the white line appears.  But that wasn't a problem with this particular ruler since you position it once and then draw a whole bunch of perfectly spaced lines, zip zip zip, before you have to reposition the ruler.  By the time I finish drawing all the lines, most of the ink is visible and I didn't have to wait at all to reposition and keep going.  I almost didn't buy this ruler in class but I'm SO glad I did.  The markings on the ruler are what make it work so well, with registration marks that help you align your drawn lines with block seams and previously drawn lines.  Worth every penny even if I never use it again -- and I KNOW I'm going to use it again and again.  (By the way, I'll be stitching in the ditch at the seam that runs through the center of those diamonds but didn't need to draw a pencil line where I already have a seam to follow.  That's why the spacing looks off at the center in the photo).

Lines Outside the Diamonds Spaced One Inch Apart

After drawing the 1/2" spaced lines inside the diamonds, I switched back to my 24.5" long Creative Grids ruler to mark the perpendicular lines between the diamonds.  Those were MUCH longer lines and I wanted them to line up on either side of the geese circles and diamonds, so I needed every inch of that ruler and definitely could not have marked these lines successfully once the quilt was loaded on the frame.  My original plan was to space these lines the same distance apart as the lines inside the diamonds, but I changed my mind for two reasons.  First, it had taken an eternity to mark all the 1/2" lines and I was nervously wondering how long it would take to QUILT all those lines I'd marked.  And second, I decided that changing the spacing would make the quilt more interesting.  The more closely spaced quilting lines are going to flatten the quilt more inside the diamonds and make that area seem to recede compared to the wider spaced 1" lines outside the diamonds.  Now, if I was Judi Madsen, I would probably fill in every other one of those 1" sections with some kind of fill quilting, but I think I've taken on enough challenges with this quilt so I'm planning to just quilt the lines and leave it at that!

Alright, you guys -- I've just spent 3 hours on this blog post when I only intended to spend 30 minutes.  I hope you appreciated it.  ;-). Just kidding -- I wanted to document what I'd done, how I'd done it, and what tools I used for my own personal reference because my mind is a sieve and there's no way I'd remember those details a year or two from now if I didn't write it all down here on the Internet where I know I can find it again!  But now I've got to get up to the studio and start quilting.  Wish me luck!

Obviously my one and only To-Do for Tuesday is to get Mission Impossible quilted, since I still have to do the label and binding once the quilting is finished.  I'm linking up with:

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

Luxury DIY Christmas Tree Skirt for Mom

Happy Fourth Day of Christmas!  I realize that this post would have been more timely if I'd written it a couple of weeks BEFORE Christmas, but I made this tree skirt as a surprise gift for my mother (and she does read my blog).  However, if your own tree skirt has seen better days, or you're looking at a bare tree stand now that the gifts have all been unwrapped, I encourage you to make yourself a custom tree skirt for next Christmas.  

58" Lined Microsuede Velvet ChristmasTree Skirt with Trim

When my mom mentioned that she lost her Christmas tree skirt during her last move, I started shopping for a new one that I could gift to her for Christmas.  I had some serious sticker shock at the Peppermint Forest Christmas Shoppe, where they had tree skirts made out of flimsy polyester fabric (like what a toddler Disney Princess costume would be made of) retailing for $150 or more.  Then I checked online at Horchow and Frontgate, where they had much nicer quality tree skirts but even more outlandish price points of $500, $600, even $700...  And that's for a mass-produced tree skirt with limited fabric and color options.  When you're making your own tree skirt, you can get the size you want, the colors you want, and decorate it any way you want.

This isn't the first Christmas tree skirt I've ever made.  The crazy quilted and hand-embellished tree skirt I made for my own Christmas tree was fun to make but largely a wasted effort, since the vast majority of my hand embroidery and hand stitched sequins and beads get hidden beneath the branches of the tree:

My Crazy Quilted Tree Skirt, Completed in 2010

I worked on that crazy quilted tree skirt off and on for about two years, and I wouldn't ever make one like that again.  It would have been much better to do crazy quilted stockings or even a table runner, something closer to eye level where all those decorative bobbinwork machine stitches and handwork can be seen and appreciated.  

I Had to Crawl Under My Christmas Tree to Take This Picture

There is so much going on visually with most Christmas trees anyway, what with all the ornaments and packages, that I really prefer a solid tree skirt with embellishments at the outer border where they can make a strong impact. 

So, back to this year's project for my mom's tree!  She decorates her tree primarily with red and gold ornaments, with a sprinkling of black music ornaments in the mix.  I made her skirt out of a 60" wide, deep red home dec microsuede velvet home dec fabric that was very stable with a nice drape and no rubbery upholstery backing.  I started with this tutorial from Mary Jo's Cloth Store:

Mary Jo's Tree Skirt, Tutorial Found here

The Mary Jo's tutorial is easy enough to follow for anyone who has prior experience sewing window treatments and other home dec items, but those whose sewing experience is primarily quilting or apparel could probably use the following additional tips and tricks.

Choosing your Fabric:  For this project, a home dec weight fabric is going to be your best choice, along with a drapery lining fabric.  A lightweight quilting cotton isn't going to be wide enough to cut a full size tree skirt in a single piece, and since there is no batting in this skirt it would also be too flimsy to support the heavy machine stitched trim.  You need about a yard and a half each of 54-60" wide home dec fabric and the same amount of drapery lining fabric.

Covered Cording: The Mary Jo's tutorial uses a narrow covered welt cord around the outer and inner edges of the skirt, which you don't even notice unless you look closely at the photo.  This cording serves an important function, because it keeps the lining fabric from sagging and showing along the outside edge of the skirt once it's under your tree.  However, covering 6 yards of cording with fabric adds extra work to the project and if you use the same fabric as your tree skirt like they did, you don't get any extra dramatic impact from all of that work.  I could have covered my welt cord with a contrasting fabric, or done a shirred jumbo welt cord in a contrasting fabric, but I decided to use a 3/8" decorative rope cord instead.  

Shirred Jumbo Welt Cord Would Look Great On a Tree Skirt, Too

You can read about my tips and tricks for covering welt cord with fabric in this post, and you can read about my tips for sewing in-seam decorative rope cording here.  With fabric covered cord, the challenge is feeding the two fabric layers evenly through the machine, so I use Dual Feed on my Bernina sewing machine with large diameter welt cord, but I get the best results with 3/4" diameter welt cord when I use my serger.  With in-seam rope cord, the challenge is sewing close enough to the cord that the fabric tape "lip" doesn't show.

Trimming Your Tree (Skirt): Ideally, if you're going to use multiple trims on the same tree skirt, you want to select coordinating decorative rope cord, fringes and braids from the same collection.  You would think that, as an interior designer with access to a bazillion fabrics and trims, I could have found coordinating trims for this project, but alas -- there was no time for me to custom order anything and I was limited to what was in stock at my local JoAnn's store.  I loved the black and white pom pom fringe but there was no coordinating rope cord to go with it, just this plain black cord...  and some Snow White DMC embroidery floss over in the cross stitch aisle...

DIY "Matching Rope Cord" Trim

I used a size 22 tapestry needle and unseparated embroidery floss, all 6 strands, to whipstitch my white stripes around the black cording, but had to go over each stitch twice so it would stand out enough.  That means each stitch ended up with a total of 12 strands of embroidery floss.  I think I used three or three and a half skeins of floss to go around my whole skirt, and it took several hours -- on December 23rd, mind you, racing against the Advent clock!  But I liked the tree skirt MUCH BETTER after I added the white stitching to the black cord, so it was worth it.

Ta Da!  Matching Trims!

The biggest omission with the Mary Jo's tutorial is that they tell you to "sew fringe inset from your corded edge," but they don't tell you how to get your fringe lined up in a smooth curve equidistant from the edge of the skirt.  If you try to just eyeball it as you stitch the trim down, you'll end up with a wobbly mess.  Here's the trick I came up with for mine:

Marking Fringe Placement Inset 5" from Rope Cord

I chose a 5" tall plastic spool of giftwrap ribbon and "drove" it around the outer edge of my tree skirt, with the bottom edge of the spool riding in the groove between the black rope cord and the red fabric edge. (Note that the fringe gets sewn to the tree skirt PRIOR to lining it.  The seam allowance with the lip cord is merely rolled to the back side in this picture to enable me to get the ribbon spool right up against the cord edge).  The top edge of the plastic spool left a temporary track in the microsuede velvet pile in a smooth curved line spaced exactly 5" from the edge of the tree skirt.  I was then able to pin my fringe along that line, with pins as close as an inch or so apart so the fringe couldn't move out of place on the way from the worktable to the sewing machine.

Because my tree skirt is made of home dec weight microsuede, I used a size 90 Microtex needle and regular polyester all purpose sewing thread for this project, in black to match my trim.  I sewed the rope cord and fringe with a regular straight stitch, elongated to 3.5, but with no other tension adjustments.  I sewed the rope cord with Zipper Foot #4D and sewed the fringe with Open Toe Embroidery Foot #20D, engaging Dual Feed for both tasks.  

Machine Stitching the Inset Pom Pom Fringe

I sewed the fringe down in two passes, placing my stitching just inside the white running stitch embellishment on the fringe.  There IS such a thing as fringe adhesive, by the way, and gluing the trim to the skirt is an option.  However, so many of us store our holiday decorations in areas that are subject to extreme temperatures and humidity, and then we would be dragging gifts back and forth across the glued-on fringe, and i don't think the glue would hold for very long in those conditions.  Stitching the trim is the way to go.

So here you have the finished tree skirt, draped over my ironing board upon completion just after the stroke of midnight announcing the arrival of Christmas Eve:

Finished, In the Very Nick of Time!

...and here it is again, beneath my mom's tree:

Finished Tree Skirt, Beneath the Tree

There was a little bit of silliness initially about the tree skirt being "too nice to go on the floor," but then after running the vacuum cleaner she agreed to put the Christmas tree skirt on the floor beneath the tree as I had intended.  I think she likes it.

Mom's Christmas Tree, Naked No More!

So, that's what I was sewing last week when my blog was silent!  It's a good thing I finished on time, since I had no backup plan...  My mom did some Christmas sewing of her own, making pajama pants for Lars and Anders that were a huge hit.

As for me, this project reminded me that as much as I enjoy the "journey" of making, it really does feel good to FINISH something every once in awhile!  Now that the cookies have all been eaten and the wrapping debris has all been thrown away, I'm mulling my options for what to sew next. It sure would be nice if 2018 could be the Year I Finally Finished a Bunch of Stuff!

Today I'm linking up with Esther's WIPs on Wednesday, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Off the Wall Friday at Nina-Marie's Creations, Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, and Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication.  Enjoy these last few days of 2017!