Dusting off the sewing machine, holiday project #4

To be honest, there was a lot more than dusting involved... My sewing room, aka the guest room and my throw everything in there and forget about room, needed a bit more work than just dusting... in fact you couldn't GET to the sewing machine nor to the guest bed. Since I not only have projects I'd like to get done for the holidays but guests coming for the Thanksgiving holiday, well I needed to at the minimum to clear a path!



After spending a number of hours cleaning, clearing and decluttering my sewing table was at least in a usable state (and you and my guests will be happy to know that the bed is too!)....

My sewing project?  A new tree skirt.  This one is for my small dining room tree that sits on top of my buffet... not the "real" tree (although I do have plans to make a similar one for it!).  I had some drop cloth fabric and I purchased one yard of quilt type fabric for $6.99/yd to embellish it... with ruffles.  No pattern here... I was just winging it.  In fact, I wasn't sure if one yard of fabric would be enough but I plowed ahead.

I started with cutting a rough circle, translation... I cut a rough square and folded it like I was making a paper snowflake, into a wedge or pie shape... cut the raw ends to form a circle.  Not perfect but I wasn't going for perfection and it was at least roundish, if not actually round.

The next step was to measure the quilt fabric and tear 3 inch strips from selvage to selvage. 

Now if you can do the math, one yard of fabric should have yielded 12 strips... I only got 11 since the fabric wasn't cut straight across the weave.  Don't you hate that?

Fortunately, before I got any further, I also realized I needed to make a "radius" cut of the circle of drop cloth or it wasn't going to go around any kind of tree very well.... I just folded the circle in half and cut to the mid point.  I did turn this edge under and did a rough hem, I did not hem the outside of the "circle".

Next up was to sew a basting stitch along the long edge of each strip of quilt fabric...about 1/2 inch from the edge.  You can see the torn edge here.

After gathering the strip by pulling on one of the threads, I pinned... with lots and lots of pins, so that the ungathered edge ran along the edge of the skirt's circle bottom. Then I stitched right on top of where the basting stitches were.  To start each piece I started at the cut opening and kept going until I got all around the circle... layering a new piece over the previous piece as needed.  The first ruffle took about 3 1/2 or 4 strips of fabric... of course the ruffles took less fabric as I moved up the circle.

The next ruffle was pinned so that it just covered the top of the prior ruffle.  I was able to get 5 rows of ruffles this way.  If I had measured and planned I would have bought another 1/6 or so of a yard so that I could have gotten two more strips... to make it closer to the center with my ruffles.

I do like how it turned out.... the quilt fabric has small gold dots on a sort of muslin looking background.  Since this tree will be decorated with gold, silver and mercury glass, with perhaps a few of my vintage shiny brites, the cream and subtle gold will work well.  So... this project didn't have any glitter, but there is a bit of gold and of course the ruffles!

So once again, I give you, my farmgirl with a bit of bling... all for just $6.99 plus thread and my drop cloth scrap!

And speaking of girls, ruffles and gold?

It seems that I'm not the only farmgirl here at Red Gate Farm that appreciates a ruffle or two,

linking up to