XMas in July Part 1 + Misc. Projects

Last Christmas before my boyfriend and I jetted off (sailed off?) on a holiday cruise to avoid holidays, we spent some time at his sister's house. She was setting up her tree. Her living room is huuge and has incredible vaulted ceilings which means the space demands a big tree.

As I was helping her hang ornaments, it dawned on me that she didn't have a tree skirt. Naturally I asked her why this was. Apparently she just couldn't find anything that wasn't disgustingly cheesy and Christmasy. So I decided to make her one.

For her tree skirt, she wanted black, silver, and white. (Yay! Oxford comma!)

I have spent a few months researching patterns and came up with my own. I am using twelve 30ish degree wedges. As far as fabric goes, it isn't all quilting cotton! A lot of it is, but I am also including some fancy schmancy fabrics to add texture.

This first one is a "special occasion" fabric with fancy roses.

The next fancy fabric is a crinkly silver. The texture reminds me of ruminant molars. Whatever this stuff is made of made a hilarious popping noise every single time my sewing machine needle went through it.

The rest of the wedges used quilting cotton. Except for one fabric, all of the quilting cotton wedges have a wonky asterisk pattern that could be bows or snowflakes.

So this is what it looks like with all the wedges assembled and stitched together.

Now I'm stuck because I don't know how to quilt it or even what to back it with. Luckily I have about 5 months to figure it out!

On to other projects!

I made my first Spice Market tote. Well, sort of. It was coming out way too heavy with all the interfacing, so I left the interfacing off the lining. This could possible be because the exterior fabric is Echino linen. Have any of you made one with all quilting weight and experienced something similar? I also left out the pocket and the false bottom because they seemed unnecessary for a grocery tote.

Now here is a close-up of the hipster stag linen I used for the bag! Spweee!

I also tackled a project out of One Yard Wonders: The bed organizer thingamajig! I had purchased the rubber shelf liner at Container Store ages ago, so I was itching to make this. I used two different fabrics for added cute. Here are some photos of it. The lighting is horrible because the pictures were taken at night time.