Teacher Gifts

Kati, over at from the blue chair, made the most wonderful Christmas Tree pillow.  And then she so kindly gave all the dimensions so that others could make one, too.  

I thought it was fabulous, and had three teacher gifts to make....so it was a tree factory here for a weekend before school let out.

It was great fun chopping up a bunch of greens and red from my stash.  I just made big piles of each.  

I think only one or two would officially be called Christmas fabrics. 

 When it was time to quilt the tops, I stitched just an 1/8th inside each green shape. 

Same for the wonky, golden stars on top.  

The white was stippled.  

I wanted to try out the little, loopy swirls that Kati used - I thought it looked like swirling snow - but I haven't done it before and didn't want to take the time to practice.  Due to poor time management on my part, it was about 10pm, the night before gifting, that I sat to stipple and bind. 

Luckily, I had already made the zippered backs for all three earlier in the weekend.  I followed this tutorial again.  

I named them "A Hobson Tree" after the preschool that Becket attends.  The ciriculum is play based and fabulous.  If you're a parent of small people and haven't seen a play based preschool yet, GO-RUN look for one in your area.  One part of Hobson is the crafts, available to the children each day.  They may choose to do it or not, and it is ALWAYS open ended.  They may have construction gingerbread men out to make....the brown cookie shape is cut and a whole slew of things to glue on and decroate with are avaialable.  Then they just go at it.  The best way to encourage their creativity, in my opinion.  What fun is there in a long row of identically pasted button crafts?  So, since I had fun just making the trees however I wanted each time, they had to be called "Hobson Trees".

One final note - IKEA has the most fabulous feather pillow inserts.  Available at 20" square and only $6.99 each.  They made wonderfully fluffy pillows!