I’ve just realised I haven’t told you about my latest Minerva Make…

This year I decided to make a Christmas Tree Skirt, I’ve been admiring them for a while so when Minerva Crafts asked me to make something Christmassy it was the first idea I had. I found a pattern by Deonn Stott called Star Medallion Tree Skirt which looked perfect and not too difficult either. I chose some gorgeous Christmas fabric with gold swirls on, it worked really well as I wanted three different colours and this fabric comes in red, green and cream. A few days later a lovely parcel arrived from Minerva.

I did have to laugh as when my OH saw the parcel I explained it was fabric for a Christmas tree skirt. He looked rather puzzled a few days later when he saw it half made as he thought it was a skirt for me with Christmas trees on! He was still a bit nonplussed about the idea, I sold it to him on the grounds that it would collect all the pine-needles up, save them getting trodden into the carpet!

The skirt is made like a quilt, the slit and the centre circle are not cut until almost the end. My first job was to cut out 18 large squares and stitch them together to make pairs of half square triangles. It was lovely arranging them on my design wall and seeing the colours come together.It was then a fairly quick job to stitch them all together.

Once it was well pressed I could sandwich it with a red fabric backing and some cotton batting in between. I laid it out on the dining room table so I could get it nice and smooth and used 505 adhesive spray to hold it in place.

It took me a while to decide how to quilt it, the pattern picture has feather quilting down each diamond, which looked stunning but I don’t think my quilting is quite up to it yet! In the end I decided on a flower pattern which I’d seen in a tutorial on facebook just a few days before. I liked the idea that it was just curves and points, I find patterns with curves and points easier to do neatly with free motion quilting as the point gives me somewhere to stop and ‘regroup’ rather than wiggling on a straight line. I quilted in red, green and cream Gutermann thread with red in the bobbin formost of it. The fabric was lovely to quilt as it has a smooth sheen to it which seemed to let it move really easily under the foot.

Once the basic ‘quilt’ was complete I had to make it into a tree skirt. I cut a straight line from the outer edge to the centre with a rotary cutter and then cut a 4” circle in the centre. I trimmed all the outer edges and reinforced the inner corners with a row of stitching. All that was left was binding and buttons.

I cut some lengths of ribbon to make button loops and pinned them in place down one side so they would be stitched under the binding.

Binding a star shape was a bit of a learning curve for me,I’ve only ever bound nice 90’ outside corners. The star had narrow angles and inside corners too. Luckily the designer Deonn had a couple of tutorials on her website so I watched those and went for it! I stitched the inner circle first with a length of bias binding in the red swirl fabric. I hand stitched the back which is how I prefer to attach binding. 

 The star shape proved easier to bind than I thought with my points coming out better than I anticipated! .I didn’t fancy hand-stitching the whole of the binding down so I found my clover clips and turned the binding to the back. I then stitched in the ditch from the front, catching down the back as I went. I covered some buttons with the red fabric,trying to cut the circles so I had a swirl on each button. I stitched them on and my Christmas Tree skirt is all ready for the festive season.

I’ve now put it under my  Christmas tree, I think it looks great! Why not follow the link to Minerva Crafts blog and check out the other Christmas makes.