The Ultimate, Practical Christmas Tree

SewCalGal is running a Christmas quilt show starting November 14, 2010. 


This blog entry is my submission to the show, although the quilt itself was made in 2004.  Although this quilt has it's own webpage on my quilting website, Dread Pirate Rodgers, I am copying the information here, so it can be included in SewCalGal's Christmas Quilt Show.



The Ultimate, Practical Christmas tree  
(for apartment dwellers)  
made in 2004

I'm not quite sure how I allow myself to get into these situations, but here's another case of Real Life doing an end run around my plans to stick to my UFO pile.

Earlier this year, my oldest Dear Daughter, who is living in an apartment while she attends college, had bemoaned the fact that she had absolutely no space for a Christmas Tree and she was Very Sad. Being the supportive Mom that I am, I suggested that I could make her a quilted Christmas Tree wall-hanging as a substitute.  With further discussion, it evolved into a wall-hanging that she could actually hang real ornaments on and that real lights could be used. At that point, we just left the discussion where it was.

Over Thanksgiving, she was able to come home and the project was resurrected.

She drew a full-sized pattern for me to work from; we raided my stash (pitifully lacking in appropriate fabrics) and augmented with fabrics from 2 different local quilt stores.
 
I began working on it and steadily over the days, it began to take shape. Dear Daugher returned to school and I continued working on her wall-hanging.  I put an extra layer of batting in the snow boughs so they would be extra poofy.

Originally, my daughter wanted "branch shaped" quilting lines on the snow boughs, but after I showed her a picture of it, she decided that she liked the unquilted snow boughs better and could I please remove the quilting? [sigh]

(aside: isn't this picture awesome??  The light coming in from the side window really shows the poofy "snow covered" branches and reveals just how three-dimensional it is.  It also shows the branchy quilting I had done, which was ultimately rejected.)


Originally, the thought was to put ribbon loops on the tree so that real ornaments could be hung, but in practice, the ribbon loops looked awful. I substituted loops made from perle cotton. I found some extra tiny mini-tree lights, powered by a battery pack at JoAnn's. I made buttonholes in the wall-hanging where the lights could be pushed through to the front.

At night, with the mini-lights turned on, it looks very dramatic. The battery pack was placed in a pocket I sewed to the back of the quilt. Two hanging sleeves where made .. one obviously on the top, but another one on the bottom, so that another rod could be put there for weight ... to help hold the wall-hanging straight.

Addendum:  the quilt was delivered to Dear Daughter,  who has since moved several times.  I hope that this quilt has moved with her, even if all the boxes were never fully unpacked after each move.   When she finally settles in one place for "a while" and the contents of the boxes are rediscovered, I hope the quilt brings back fond memories. :-)

Merry Christmas, Catherine.  :-)


love, Mom