I have a confession to make. It’s pretty serious. Ok, here it is… I have a few unfinished creative projects hidden away in my house. And I am not talking about things that I started a few weeks ago. These are projects that have been in hiding for years. Whew! Glad to have that off my chest.

We will stop right now for a moment so you can make such a confession yourself if you need to. There. Doesn’t that feel better?

Now what are we going to do about it?

I came across a bag with the top, batting and backing fabric cut out for a tree skirt that I am sure is about 25 years old. It even had printed fabric cutouts for country designs to be appliqued onto the fabric. They had been ironed on with adhesive webbing (which wasn’t sticking very well).Ok, while I am being honest, there were actually TWO tree shirts cut out in that bag. Not sure if I was planning to make them both for myself, or what?

The designs on the skirt were not really appealing to me now, though I am sure they were going to be very cute when I originally planned it. So I pulled them off and cut out some tree shapes from Christmasy fabric I had- which, believe it or not, was the same green fabric you see pictured above. (I have a hard time getting rid of stuff that could be used someday.)

I stitched the skirt fabric and batting wrong sides together, turned it right side out and topped stitched around the edges to hold it in place. Because it is so much fun, I decided to play around again with free motion stitching. I stitched around the edges of the tree in green thread and then doodle stitched around the trees unevenly adding ornaments and trunks. I also free motion stitched garland in the middle of the trees. To finish the plain fabric skirt background, I free motion stitched loops around the topstitched edges. Pieces of ribbon were sewn to the skirt opening to tie it around the tree. 

It really did not take long to finish this tree shirt (well, if you don’t count the 25 years, that is) and was fun to do. It was also very satisfying to know I had one less unfinished project tucked away. I am not sure if I will make another tree skirt (from the second piece) or just use that fabric for a different project.

As you are decorating your home this year or trying to figure out presents to give, maybe it’s time to pull out some of those unfinished projects you have stashed away. You may need to modify them from the original intent, but it just might save you some money and give you the satisfaction of finishing something. And you can have the joy of creating!

What unfinished project are you going to pull out of hiding?