Easy Christmas Tree Wall Hanging

The super easy Christmas wall-hanging is the O Green Scrap Tree from Harriat Wyant's book Piece on Earth. The basic tree is made of 2 inch squares of green fabric (or any other color or your choice) starting with one 2 inch square at the top of the tree and 5 - 2 inch squares on the bottom row. Now that I have the technique down, I make this same pattern using anywhere from 1/2 inch squares on up. Using 1 inch square makes a very nice sized wall hanging.

The wall-hanging itself is very simple, the embelishments you put on it make it special. Check out Harriat's book for some great ideas. I use heart charms as tree ornaments attached using round necklace chain links. I thread a thin red ribbon thru the hearts or the chain link for garland. I use a large heart charm in the upper right hand corner on the background and start the garland as a bow at the top of the heart. The ribbon drapes down to the tree and then threads down thru the charms and/or chain links, draping and twisting as you would drape a tree in garland. Super, super easy and looks great!!!

The one thing missing in Harriat's book is assembly instructions. Her book has great pictures and plenty of ideas, but how to put it all together is somewhat lacking. After doing a couple I finally got it down how to put it together in a fairly quick manner. This is not a fabric saving method - only a time saving one. Here is how to goes:

It is difficult to draw as each row is centered thus every other row is 1/2 square off (and my word processor does not do 1/2 char movements). Hopefully you can see the pictures of a couple I have finished to give you an idea of what it looks like as well. I tried the following ascii picture using two char spaces to equal one 2" square:

  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB   <- 2" outside border (B)
  BBbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbBB   <- 2" inside border (b)
  BBbb__________________bbBB   <- 2" strip background (_)
  BBbb__________________bbBB   <- 2" strip background (_)
  BBbb________||________bbBB   <-|
  BBbb_______||||_______bbBB     |
  BBbb______||||||______bbBB     |- 2" strips background and tree squares
  BBbb_____||||||||_____bbBB     |     (_ and ||)
  BBbb____||||||||||____bbBB   <-|
  BBbb________tt________bbBB   <- 2" strip background and tree base (tt)
  BBbb~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~bbBB   <- 2" strip ground (~~)
  BBbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbBB
  BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

Using 2" squares/strips, the total size comes out to be 19 1/2" square.

Here's the directions:

1. Select fabrics
   • 4-5 different greens for the Christmas tree (or whatever color tree you wish to make)
   • 1 brown for the tree base square
   • 1 white-on-white, beige-on-beige, or a light colored starry fabric for the background
   • 1 tan to use for the ground strip
   • 1-2 greens or reds to the border. Can use one of the greens used in the tree, but two makes the border too dark. I usually chose one of the lighter greens and then a dark Christmasy red for the second border.

2. Cut fabrics.
   • 15 2" squares of green.
   • 1 2" square tree base
   • 8 2" x 22" strips background
   • 1 2" x 22" strip ground
   • 4 2" x 22" strips outside border
   • 4 2" x 22" strips inside border

3. Assemble green and brown squares of tree into strips.

            ||      <- top strip of tree is just one green square
           ||||     <- second strip is made of two 2" green squares
          ||||||    <- third strip is 3 2" green squares
         ||||||||   <- fourth strip is 4 2" green squares
        ||||||||||  <- fifth strip is 5 2" green squares
            tt      <- sixth strip is 1 2" brown tree base square
     

   Sew the number of squares for each strip so that you now have all the strips for the tree. Iron. The top strip and bottom base do not need sewn together as they are each just one square.

4. Assemble the tree to the background.

   Lay aside two of the back ground strips. The remaining strips you fold in half longways and cut in the middle. You just doubled the number of 2" strips of background and now should have 12 11" strips.

   For each strip of the tree, attach the background using the shorter 11" background strips. The symbol <-> show where to attach. At this point each of the tree strips are a different length. Don't worry about this just now - it will be corrected shortly.

            __________ <-> || <-> __________       tree strip #1
          ___________ <-> |||| <-> __________      tree strip #2
          __________ <-> |||||| <-> __________     tree strip #3
         __________ <-> |||||||| <-> __________    tree strip #4
         __________ <-> |||||||||| <-> __________   tree strip #5
            __________ <-> tt <-> __________       tree strip #6
       

5. Assemble the tree strips together.

   This is the only tricky part of the wall-hanging. Starting with the top of the tree, sew together tree strips #1 and #2. The tricky part: center the two green squares in strip #2 with the green square in strip #1.

            __________||__________       tree strip #1
          ___________||||__________      tree strip #2
                      ^^
                    center
     

   Add strip #3 to strip #2, again, centering the three green squares to the two green squares in strip #2.

            __________||__________       tree strip #1
          ___________||||__________      tree strip #2
          __________||||||__________     tree strip #3
                      ^^
                    center
     

   Add strips #4 and #5 the same way. Add the strip with the tree base (strip #6) the same way, but it is more difficult to center one square against 5, so I fold the tree in half, and center the tree base to the single square at the top of the tree.

6. You should now have a partial tree block. Iron the block.

   It should now look something like this:

            __________||__________       tree strip #1
          ___________||||__________      tree strip #2
          __________||||||__________     tree strip #3
         __________||||||||__________    tree strip #4
        __________||||||||||__________   tree strip #5
            __________tt__________       tree strip #6
     

7. Trim the right and left edges of the tree block.

   It should be trimmed so that there are the width of TWO squares less a 1/4" seam allowance (3 3/4") between the outside green squares in tree strip #5 and the edge of the tree square.

   After trimming, it should now look something like this:

           ________||________
           _______||||_______
           ______||||||______
           _____||||||||_____
           ____||||||||||____
           ________tt________
     

   I have found you should trim before going on to the next step. When trying to conserve fabric, I have occasionally started the next strips over too far and ended up with them too short when I later went to trim. If you are using full 20" or 22" strips, you can bypass ironing at this point and wait until after all the background and ground strips have been added.

8. Finish the top of the background.

   Add the two long background strips to complete the top of the tree block. Add the ground strip to complete the bottom. Iron and trim again as the 22" ground and background strips were probably longer than were really needed.

   The tree block is now complete and should look something like this:

           __________________
           __________________
           ________||________
           _______||||_______
           ______||||||______
           _____||||||||_____
           ____||||||||||____
           ________tt________
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     

9. Add the borders however you like. To keep it easy, just do strip borders (ie not mitered).

10. 10. Add batting and backing and quilt the wallhanging.

    I machine quilt doing stitch-in-the-ditch around the border and the strips. I do not stitch in the ditch around each individual green tree square - I stitch down each of the strips then stitch in the ditch on the outline the tree and tree base.

    Finish the edge using your favorite method, but folding over the background and machine stitching is very easy. It is best to use the same fabric for backing as one of the borders. Bias is also an easy way to bind the wall-hanging.

Hints and Ideas:

• on the background strips, I use 22" strips. Cut 4 44" strips, cut the 44" strips in half to make 8 22" strips, then cut 6 of the 8 strip in half again to make 12 11" strips. 40" width fabric works ok as well as in all cases, the real length needed is less than 20" and 10".
• instead of using 15 2" squares, make the tree using strips of nice Christmas fabric. This will require 5 fabric strips as follows, 2"x2", 2"x3 1/2", 2"x5", 2"x6 1/2", 2"x8". There are some really neat Christmas fabrics that look great doing it this way, especially fabrics that have lots of gold in them.
• instead of sewing on the charms, use some of those "instant" button pins that you can use to pin on a button.
• instead of charms, use a nice Christmasy ribbon and tack it on like a garland. I have used gold edged ribbon and it looks great. A glitzy ribbon makes up for the lack of ornaments. Also, instead of tacking on the ribbon, use jewelry chain link and tread the ribbon thru the links. That way, when the ribbon gets worn or you get tired of it, you can just thread thru new ribbon.
• use some neat looking buttons, small Christmas ornaments, or a couple Christmas button covers to add a few Christmas presents under the tree.
• use small red and green bows as tree ornaments instead of charms.
• make two wall-hangings at a time and get some economy of scale. I can usually make two of them in a evening. Good to do when needing a couple easy projects for the church or school bazaar.
• this is a very easy project using 1" squares also. I still use a 1/4" seam allowance, but I trim the seam to 1/8" after it is sewn. I iron first, trim to 1/8" second as it seems that the larger seam allowance is easier to iron.
• I always iron the seam allowances towards the dark fabric. This means that the greens on strip #5 will both be inwards towards the green. Besides not having the darker tree fabric show thru the lighter background fabric, this also gives the tree dimension forward off the background which becomes more prominent when you stitch-in-the-ditch outlining the tree.
• a trick I learned from quiltnet - to help keep from having wavy borders, BEFORE sewing on the binding, stitch very close to the edge around the entire quilt to stabilize it. If you use basting stitches, you can use the stitch line to take up any extra in the border and help ease it into the final binding.