Gnoma Santa Mini Tree Skirt

My friend Mary LOVES A Christmas Story, the old classic about Ralphie and his dreams of a Beebee gun. So when she found this collectible village and more importantly this statue of Ralphie's nightmare, The only reasonable thing to do was 1) collect the set and 2) get a small pink christmas tree that matched the bunny suit. Some things just aren't optional.

Like making tree skirt worthy of so amazing and unique a tree. Traditional christmas colors were out of the question, and shocking pink Christmas fabric is, in fact, a little hard to find. It took some looking. But my friend herself came to my rescue when she found this at the Fat Quarter Shop:

This is Holiday Happy by Lecien, with little Gnoma Clauses. With a 3' tree, half a yard of fabric was more than sufficient to make a reversible tree skirt. The skirt was just two 18" circles plus batting & binding.

I even quilted it myself, drawing on the experience of a recent free-motion quilting class, an air-erase marker, and a "cheat" using the snowflake on the reverse to alternate Santa, snowflake, Santa snowflake for my first original free-motion quilting design. Here it is from the top:

 And from the bottom:

and here the tree skirt is in action, courtesy of my friend. It was gifted in late November, 2010: