12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop

Welcome to the first day of this exciting hop.  A huge thank you goes out to Sarah @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict for putting so much time into this project.  You want to be sure and visit her each day as she has a fantastic tutorial for making your own Christmas quilt.  You can find the fabric requirements HERE and options for other color ways HERE.  She has broken down the assembly of this quilt into workable time blocks each day - very doable.

And I share today with Carole Carter @ From My Caroline Home, so be sure to hop on over and see what she has to inspire you for early holiday gift making.

On my stop today I would like to share my close bond to the Feather Tree.    A family heritage back to the beginning of the feather tree and it's 'transplanting' to the USA by German Imagrants.  I have three of my great grandmother's feather trees - two from Germany and one she made for her first Christmas in America. 

Feather trees were initially made of green-dyed goose feathers which were attached to wire branches. The feathers were split and then secured with wire to form the branches. These wire branches were then wrapped around a central dowel which acted as the trunk. The branches were widely spaced to keep the candles from starting a fire, which allowed ample space for ornaments. 

These trees appeared in the U.S. in 1913, when they were offered through the Sears-Roebuck catalog. These little trees are highly valued by antiques collectors today.

The Addis Brush Company developed an artificial tree in the 1930s, using the same machinery used to produce toilet brushes. These trees had branches made from twisted wires with needles of pig bristles dyed green. These small branches were twisted together to make larger branches, which were inserted into a center pole. The branches were color-coded for easy assembly.

I would like to share a tutorial with you on how you can make your own Feather Tree :

STEP #1 - fabric requirements:  Brown 1" by WOF (or equal of) and background 12.5" x 15.5"

STEP #2 - from background, cut three 1" x 12.5" off bottom and then cut your remaining 12.5" square in half (6.25")

STEP #3 - cut one 12.5" strip from your length of brown and sew in between the two backgrounds.

STEP #4 - from remaining brown strip cut one 4.5", one 6.5" one 8.5" and one 10.5".  Set one background stip aside and from the other two strips cut two 2.5", two 2.5", two 3.5", and two 4.5" pieces.

                            

STEP #5 - sew your backgrounds to the ends of the brown strips per photo - smallest background piece to the largest brown strip, etc...

STEP #6 - slice your tree base background into four sections from bottom - 4.5", then a 3.5" , then a 2.5", then a 1.5" per photo.

STEP #7 - sew your longest branch to the widest background, and continue up so you now have branch sections.

STEP #8 - now sew those secions together taking care to line up the 'trunk' seams and and the ends. per photo.

  

Now you have a funny looking phone pole!  and that lonely strip.

STEP #9 -  Cut a 1" strip off the bottom and sew it to the top of your tree.  Now you can make your tree your own. 

STEP #10 - Either sew the plain strip to the bottom or you can add a brown base or a pretty bit of color.  Border and quilt as you like.  Now you decide how you want your feather tree.  Sew on some bits of green yarn.  sew on some strips of green (or colorful) fabric scrap, add some little buttons, add some little ornaments - just play with it. 

I will be finishing up my feather tree as the hop progresses and show the finish at the end.  And yes, I make a new feather tree mini every year as you can see some of them today.

I, also, have a very quick ornament tutorial HERE

As a thank you for visiting my space during this hop, I have a little give away.

A mini wool quilt kit (13" x15") - a gift for yourself or an early start on the gift box.  I will keep the comments open until the last day of the hop, July 25th, until 12pm(est) and announce the winner the next morning.  I will ship international.  Be sure I have a way to contact you.

Sewingly Yours,

Sharon