Prequilted Fabric Session 6: Christmas Tree Skirt

Now I wanna show you a Christmas tree skirt project. This one, I really had fun making. This one I think I already said I did on my long-arm machine and I used the satin with the metallic thread, which really pops the design. But, more importantly, when the lights are on at Christmas, it reflects all the light and it just shimmers. So this has always been a favorite and I've had quite a few people ask me, how did you make it?

And how did you go from a square to an octagon? So I want to share that with you. And it's really quite simple, but it looks complicated. So let's put this over here for the moment. And for this one, I went ahead and I just bought some plain white fabric at the store.

Unfortunately, my long arm is in storage so I could not duplicate this, although I would've liked to. But I've got some ideas for this little plain Jane that I think will dress her up quite nicely. The first thing is, this is a math problem and I know most of us are math adversive. I am not gonna give you the long drawn-out formula that my husband found on the internet and go into all of the theorems behind it. I'm gonna give you the down and dirty of what you need to know to turn a square into an octagon.

And here it is. Bottom line. You take the diameter of your square and multiply it times this number right here, 0.41421. That is a constant that you will use no matter what size octagon you want to make. This particular quilt over here, I bought a piece and I trimmed it to 36 inches square.

So 36 inches times 0.41421 equals 14.9. That number is the side for each side of the octagon. So each equal side will be 14.9 inches. But quilters don't work in centimeters or millimeters or any other meters. We're not metric.

At least on this side of the pond. All of our rulers are in quarter inches, eighth inches, possibly even 16th of an inches, much to my husband's dismay. He's like it was so much easier to be in decimal. I'm like, you're not a quilter. Don't even go there.

So I can't work with 0.9. We need to convert that. So to convert the decimal to a fraction is very easy. You're going to multiply the decimal portion, which is just the 0.9, by the denominator of the desired fraction. Ooh, that sounds tough.

All I'm saying is I wanna work in eighth inches. So I am going to multiply the decimal, 0.9, by eight, because we're working in eighths. If we were working in quarters, I would multiply it by four. We're going for eighths. 0.8, or rather 0.9 times eight is 7.2.

You're going to round that to the nearest whole number, which is a seven. So this 0.9 has now somehow turned into a seven, which we put over the denominator. And we now have 14 7/8 inches. This is going to be very, very close. We are going to lose a little bit in the conversion, just a smidgen.

So what I found worked very well. I kind of fudged with it. And 14 7/8, when I've used that as my point, I found out that I was off in some places by as much as 1/4 of an inch. 1/4 of an inch in my book is not satisfactory. 1/8 of an inch is.

On a tree skirt laying on the floor. That's bunched up under a tree. Most people are not going to know if one of your sides is off by 1/8 of an inch. You do not have to be that anal. This gets you very, very close.

1/4 of an inch. Yeah. You might be able to notice it. And I wouldn't feel comfortable with that. But we're going to round it and be within that 1/8 inch.

So here's the ticket. You've got the formula. This will be on the PDF that you can download. All right. So I took the tree skirt.

It's 36 inches square. I rounded my 15 or 14 7/8 up to 15 inches. Right? Hold that thought. I don't want you to looking at that yet.

I took the square and I folded it in half and in half again. Folded it vertically, folded it horizontally. So now I have an 18-by-18-inch square. I could cut each side individually, but if I cut it here, it will all be even. My opposite sides will match.

Right? So what I did was, since each side is going to be 15 inches. You're going to have a side here. You're going to have a diagonal, and then you're gonna have a vertical, and so on all the way around, all right? 15 inches.

Except this is only 18 inches. We have a fold. From the fold, measure out 7 1/2 and put a pin. 7 1/2 is half of 15 for my 15-inch side, all right? Now I'm going to line those all up on all side.

All right? Take your ruler. Lay I the down and measure out so that you are right at 15. All right. And you may have to just fudge a teeny bit to get between those pins.

Lightly hold it and remove the pins because you do not want to have your rotary cutter go over the pins. You'll say ouch. Press down. This is where I want my, what did I call it? A 60-inch rotary cutter.

Believe me, it would probably be nice. I wish I had my 60-millimeter rotary cutter because the fabric would go through it a lot easier or it would go through the fabric easier, but I've got a 45. So I am just going to work it. Hold it very tight. Press down.

Don't dare let that move. It's just a little bit of agony to get through. That's because I have a dull blade and you know what I see? I see a pin that I missed up top there. Normally, if you have a sharp blade, and especially with a 60 millimeter, you will not have to saw through the fabric.

That's the theory. All my corners are even. There at 15. I'm still sitting here at real close to 7 1/2 within 1/16 of an inch. When I open this up, what do we have?

We have an octagon. All right? There's your tree skirt. Almost. Now you need to do a couple more things.

You need to find dead center. So we know it's here. And I'm going to go this way. I know it's here. And just for grins and giggles, I'm going to measure that.

It's 30 inches across. Wasn't that 30? Oh, 36 inches across. Let's see, I'm a little off. That would be 18 right there.

I'm way off. And now pick a side, any side. We're going to measure it. Okay, there's my centers. I've got the marked.

And what I'm going to do is we're going to cut up the center of the quilt. Once I've got my marks aligned. And you can mark it with a marking if you want. I just tend to like to use pins. They're quick and they're easily.

Okay, I've got my side slit. Now I need a three-inch hole. Why do I need a three-inch hole? Funny you should ask. The split is so we could get it around the tree.

You're gonna drape it around the tree. I can't put it over the top and bring it down. You've gotta have a split. So that's what the split was. I find that a three-inch hole is perfect around most artificial trees.

If you have an outdoor live tree, you may need to adjust this if you have a wider base. But typically this is a nice size. If you go any smaller, there is no way you are going to be able to make the turn with your binding. I had a very difficult time making it even at three inches. It's not perfect, but I figured that close up to the tree.

Hopefully nobody's getting under there and looking at it and criticizing it. So now we're going to plop this down and estimate about where center is. Mark it. And if you don't use an ink pen and you aren't happy with the marking, you can certainly come back and change it. That's pretty close.

I think that's close enough. I would come in with scissors and trim this. If you wanna go a little bit bigger, that's just fine. I just don't like it where it falls down off the tree. And all of a sudden you're seeing a lot of the artificial branch there.

I like it up tight and snug. So now you're all set. Your tree skirt is basically together. I thought this would look really cute if you use the red continuous binding. Look all of a sudden how that's popping.

Just that little bit of color. Or a bright Kelly green. I think if you put in the corners a little spray of holly with some red leaves in each corner, that could dress it up very nicely. You could do that with applique. You could certainly put some embroidery on here or some bead work or whatever suits your fancy.

All of a sudden you've gone from a little simple skirt to something that can be quite fun. There's a couple more things you need to know about. When you get ready to bind. And I'm not gonna bind this on the video. I'm just gonna talk you through it.

You're basically going to cut your end flush. You don't want the diagonal there. So cut that off flush. We can do that. And you're going to go ahead and bind it again.

Just do it from the rear because nobody's gonna be looking at the back of this. And it's going to bind that way and you will have to work your corners, just a little bit different angle than I taught to on the place mat. But it's the same basic concept. You're just going to line the edge of the binding up with the edge of whatever side you're on. Start up here at the circle and work your way down and around, all right?

So that the whole quilt is done. All that should be left is your circle. And the ties. Leave about 12 to 15 inches for the tie. And you're going to come in and, again, working from the rear to the front, you're going to attach your binding.

When you bring it around to the front, go ahead and you are going to have all of this here is raw edge. What you're going to do is you're going to bring it in and then bring it again and stitch it down so that you have a nice finished tie. You just kind of fudge it and suddenly you will have a tie that looks great. So you can kinda see it here. Another way to do it that's actually a little bit easier is when you get to this point after you've got this sewed on, open this up.

All right, bring each side to the center. This is actually the better method. Bring each side to the center, fold it over again. And stitch the one side. That's how I did that.

I apologize. So go ahead and just do it like that. And now you've got a nice tie at the very end. Just tuck the tie in before you stitch the end. See what I'm doing here?

So that it's all tucked in. That's all you want. You just don't want your ravely edges showing. And just stitch it and you're done. You've got a tree skirt.

So that's how you turn a square into an octagon.