Peppermint Pines

I've shifted seasonal gears temporarily from autumn to Christmas, from pumpkins to trees, from runners to placemats.

Using Christmas Pines from The Pattern Basket I set to work making a forest of red and white trees, happily digging into the scrap bins to maximize the variety, though I got a bit carried away as I wanted to use up all of the strips that I had cut.

You start by creating these 'layer cake' bits for the tree...

and then add the side pieces to fill out the block. Stumps and side pieces finish it off. Once I got into it, I pieced a few at a time and then finally just finished up the pile. I ended up with more than 40 trees!

Enough to get me thinking that a longer version of this was going to be my layout, so I kept sewing and sewing.

Well, when I laid them out it was waaaaaay too large. The trees finish at 9" tall so you would need a very large table to pull off a runner that is two trees wide by seven or eight long. It was heading into tablecloth territory.

What to do? I decided to try using three in a placemat; finishing them off with a white on white dot that looks like snowballs seemed fun though I have to admit that I'm not certain all of that white is very functional for a placemat. Ah well, maybe someone will think that they work for their holiday décor. Hope so, because I made four!

I did finally come up with an idea for a runner too. Stay tuned....M