Finished Project: Christmas Tree Skirt!

 Tuesdays I work late so I always spend the first hour of the day doing laundry and watching the latest episode of the amazing race. Once I had both those tasks in motion I got back to working on the tree skirt. I had my binding complete from last night, so the first order of business was to cut the opening in the tree skirt and then pin the binding so it could be attached.

Cutting the opening was a bit scary but instead of going circular like the video I chose a square opening. I think it looks nicer and I figured it'd be easier to bind.

As I shared a few days back in regard to binding, I'm about speed and efficiency so machine binding is all I'm currently interested in. I watched a great tutorial on Riley Blake Designs website on how to machine bind and decided to try their method. Instead of binding from on top and them matching the seams to the bottom, this method had me attaching the binding to the bottom and rolling it to the top and sewing from the top, where you could see what was and was not getting sewn. Way smart.

Let me tell you the cutout was literally the hardest part to bind. One because there was no excess batting to need to cover so you have some more fabric to bring over than you do else where and two because the corners were so short it was hard to miter them.

I got the whole skirt bottom binding attached then flipped it to the front to begin pinning so I could see it to the top. When I got to the cutout I decided it wasn't working, it just seemed like to much fabric so I got out the seam ripper and took it apart. Then I re-positioned and sewed it again, well I ended up sewing it the same way, but when I was done this time I got it to be more manageable and was able to pin it in a way I liked.

I finally went at sewing the top binding on and thankfully it almost completely turned out as I had anticipated! Woo! Especially because I was at this point 15 minutes before I needed to leave for work! I took it to the living room so I could lay it flat and take photos and only found two areas where I'll need to go back and rip the seam and resew but thankfully thy were small areas!!

So happy to have this second project complete and cannot wait to use it on our tree!

*** UPDATE*** Now that I'm home from work I seam ripped the three areas that needed attention and resewed them, they look beautiful! I also now have the skirt under our tree (pictures below!)

Cutting the opening for the tree. Scary but manageable. 

Completed Skirt, I love the the middle closes on it's own so you don't have to tie it shut.

Completed Skirt, showing off the opening. 

Showing front and back fabrics. The backing fabric is cute so I might  reverse this every couple of days so I can enjoy both sides!

Completed Skirt looking at it head on. The opening is on the right side as the backing fabric and some of the Merry Christmas Fabrics on the front side are one directional.

The Reverse of the Tree Skirt!

Closeup of Cutout Binding

Closeup of Front and Back Binding

Completed Skirt Serving Its Purpose! 

Gifts Galore!

Most of today was spent enjoy football, food, and the company of our friends. However, this evening I took some time to do a few quick quilting projects. 

As I mentioned yesterday evening, I wanted to make the Tissue Holder that was featured on the Riley Blake Designs website. To do this all you need is 3 pieces of 4 by 6 inch fabric. To make the tissue holder you form it inside out, then sew around the outside and invert to have your Right Sides showing. This was really quick and looks way cuter than carry around a plastic stash of klennex. I plan to make a few more of these, likely one with the peacock fabric, and the others from different fabrics I have a good amount of. 

Completed holder, showing tissue inside :)

Completed Holder Closed

Once completing this little project (less than 15 minutes!) I decided to see if I could reverse engineer my coffee coaster from yesterday to use less material. The Riley Blake Design pattern for the coffee coaster/hot pads calls for 5 squares of equal size, one square is your backing, and then the other 4 are ironed in half, and when you sew it together and invert it only 1/2 of each fabric still shows... this lead me to wonder if you really needed the underside of fabric. So I took the corners that I had cut off my Christmas Tree Skirt and used the seam ripper to borrow the 1/2 triangle squares then I cut down the 5 inch corner square to the size of the 2 half triangles (because they were cut just over 1/4 inch they weren't a full 5 inches together). Once I had this done I laid the fabrics the same way requested by the original pattern, but I did Wrong Sides up so when I inverted the Right Sides would come through. The results were just ok. In the original design the middle points of the fabrics meet but aren't sewn together which looks fine, but with this there was a good amount of gap, so I took my hand at sewing a few extra lines in to hold down the middle better.  The coaster turned out to be usable, but I wouldn't do this for future coasters, the original way was better. 

What I consider the Top

Bottom of Coaster

Once this was complete I decided to go back to the original pattern;  I had 15 charm squares left from my Mr. Claus set I'd ordered for the Christmas Tree Skirt, so I ended up using them to create 3 more coasters to go with the one I completed last night. 

Complete Set, Fronts of Each. To get the centers to meet I ended up pinning them and then sewing the outer border. 

Two Fronts, Two Backs. The Merry Christmas Fabric is on the back of all 4, 2 are Red, 2 are Green. It was the only fabric that required it go a specific direction so I figured I'd match it. 

So far that's what I've done for the evening, I might try a few more things but we'll see. I'll be sure to update if I do!

Quick and Easy Project I'm going to Have to Try!

I am always carrying around those darn packs of tissues in plastic, I'm going to need to make these so I can carry my klennex in style!