Charming Christmas – Brightest Star Tree Skirt

Hello fellow makers, this is Luci from Sea Garden Sewing writing with my latest quilty make! I may normally be a procrastinator, but something about Christmas projects has me up and running ahead of time, even months early. I had the pleasure of working with Charming Christmas by Kelsey Carlson. Filled with festive words, beautiful florals, and Mr. and Mrs. Claus, this line has everything that screams Holiday cheer.

For this make, I chose the Brightest Star pattern by Megan Collins Quilt Design. This pattern offers directions for making either a round baby quilt or tree skirt. The pattern is written with yardage in mind, but I followed Megan’s blog post on Making a Brightest Star Quilt Pattern with Fat Quarters to make the tree skirt with fat quarters. I love to maximize the amount of prints that can be shown with the Fat Quarter version.

If you’re new to template sewing, the Brightest Star pattern may be a good first foray with just three large templates. The curves are pretty broad, so those who are tentative around curves may find this pattern easier than tighter, smaller curved projects. I’d recommend shortening your stitch length, using pins, and going slowly to maximize your success.

The tree skirt is made by creating 8 ‘slices’ and then sewing the ‘slices’ together, leaving one opening for the slit of the tree skirt.

For the backing, I used POParazzi in Riley Red, pieced diagonally. This is a great way to use less backing yardage when your intended quilt width is 1.5x your width of fabric or less (62″ or less, when using a 42″ width of fabric). I calculated the yardage needed using Jinny Beyer Studio’s Calculating Yardage for a Diagonally Pieced Quilt Back.

Here is the finished tree skirt! It’s a little early for our Christmas tree to be out, so I used some trees outdoors for staging.

This tree skirt will be a gift for my mom, and I plan on delivering it a little early so she can have it around for the full holiday season. Thank you so much for taking a look! If you’d like to see more of my quilting projects, you can follow me on Instagram at @SeaGardenSewing.