Fast and Fabulous Hexagonal Tree Skirt

The past few holiday seasons, I’ve made gobs of handmade fabric ornaments for my tree. It didn’t take long for me to realize that there’s just something extra special awesome about handmade decorations and I got hooked. This year, however, I looked down at the bottom of my tree and realized that I absolutely had to make a handmade tree skirt. I wanted it to be fabulous, but not fussy. And I definitely didn’t want it to take very long to make. After giving my brain a couple days to do what it does, I came up with this jelly-roll friendly tree skirt that definitely met my criteria of being fabulous, fuss-free, and fast.

My daughter Helena picked all the colors for our tree, so naturally I had to follow suit. I had decided to make a jelly-roll friendly layout, which meant that I needed a total of 39 width of fabric strips. So, I went over to my stash and created a gradient of thirteen different fabrics going from purples to reds to pinks to teals to blues, just like the colors of the ornaments on our tree.

With the fabric picked, I cut three 2.5” WOF strips from each print, revved up Alfonso and prepped the following supplies.

Machine Used:

Brother SE1900 (AKA Alfonso)

Supplies Used:

Thirty-Nine 2.5” Width of Fabric Strips
2.25 yards x 60” for back
Fabric for binding
Batting
Thread
1/4” foot

Constructing the Main Pieces

From the 39 strips, group them intro three sets of 13. Staggering each strip 1” as you sew them together, use a 1/4” seam allowance and press seams.
Using a ruler, match the 60-degree line with the edge of the top strip and cut the diagonal line as close to the staggered edge was possible.
On the top of the triangle, move 3” down the top strip and match the 60-degree line (now going down the opposite direction as the first) with the edge of the top strip and cut the diagonal line.
Using the same technique and moving 3” down the top of the new triangle, cut the second section from this set of strips.
Repeat steps 2-4 on two other sets of staggered strips.

Constructing the Skirt Top

Arrange the six separate sections into a hexagon.
Use a 1/4” seam allowance with right sides together and match up the seam intersections of the two sections as you sew (preparing with either clips or pins would help). Repeat this with process with 5 of the 6 seams.
For the sixth seam, sew this seam with wrong sides together, having the seam exposed on the right side of the tree skirt top.
Press all seams.

Quilting the Tree Skirt Top

Using spray glue or pins, baste batting to the wrong side of the tree skirt top.
Using a 5.00 mm stitch length, thread baste the perimeter of the skirt, the center hole and 1/4” on both sides of the exposed seam.
This is the stage where you can quilt the tree top as much or as little as you’d like. For me, I chose the simple route by stitching in the ditch of the 5 non-exposed seams, so I was able to quilt the top without having fabric on the bottom at this stage. For more elaborate quilting, having a fabric on the bottom would help.
Trim any excess batting using the fabric edge of the center hole and the skirt perimeter as the guide.