Last minute Santa Hat tree topper

This year Christmas is a little befuddled in our house.  I won't bore you with the details.

Anyway, we didn't have a tree.  And I was OK with that, I thought.

Yesterday afternoon the Christmas Spirit visited Mrs. Scrooge and I decided we needed a tree after all.  Where would Santa put the gifts if we didn't?

A mad rush to the nearest craft store ensued.  The good thing is about being a procrastinator is that you get REALLY good deals on trees.
The down side is that decorations are in short supply.

Since our cute new little 4 ft tree is too small for our giant tree topper, I had a problem.

I internet surfed a little looking for quick tree toppers to make but had no luck.  I really didn't want an angel made out of paper plates.

On some decorating web site  - can't remember which one - I saw a Santa hat topper. C-U-T-E!
But no time to order one, I'm afraid.

My brain sprang into action.
I know we had a couple of old hats somewhere.

Here's what I did:
1. Measured how tall I'd need the topper to be.
2. Cut the hat to size - chopped off the bottom.
3. Trimmed off the white trim and reattached it to the new smaller hat.
4. I had to reinforce the top of the tree a little, since artificial trees have really flimsy tops.  I just stuck two wooden skewers in there.
5. I also had to wrap the top bit in ribbon to allow the hat to slide down and not get stuck on the pine needles.
6. I stuffed some of the fabric remnants into the hat to help the pom-pom stay up because it was flopping over.

I'm happy!

Fabric Overload!

I took this photo of all the overflow this morning. These are mostly 30's reproduction fabric, which has grown that collection significantly.

Since then 33 more bolts of fabric have arrived and I'm expecting 24 more today.
It's like Christmas!
Ive been waiting a long time for these.
It's Hideaway by Lauren + Jessie Jung for Moda.
Won't this make a lovely, lovely Spring quilt?
So many ideas, so little time...

A Glimpse

Of something in the works

Those weather people!

The forecast

Reality

 

No complaints here.

Flying Geese Tutorial

Oops, I was going to post this tomorrow but my scheduling went a litte wrong.
So here it is...

Since the Holiday project I'm working on contains flying geese units I thought I'd put together a super quick and easy tutorial.
This took me about 15 minutes to write, so please excuse the crudeness...

First of all, to calculate the size of your fabric pieces:
"Real" flying geese units are always twice as wide as they are tall.

Let's say we're making 4" x 2" finished flying geese.
We're going to add 0.5" to the dimensions as we would when making any other quilt block.

Cut:
One rectangle 4.5" x 2.5"
Two squares 2.5" x 2.5"

Lay a square right side down on the rectangle and stitch corner to corner as below.

Trim the seam to 1/4".

Press toward the triangle.

Lay the remaining square right side down onto the flying geese unit and sew corner to corner.

Once again, trim the seam allowance to 1/4".

Press toward the triangle.

Woohoo! You have a flying geese unit for your quilt.

(The fabrics used here are: Fizz Dots - Lime and Shine - Sun.)

I've added a PDF version of this flying geese tutorial over here.

Still here

Working on something Holiday-ish.