Christmas FREE Stitch-a-Long Wrap Up!

This morning we posted the last of four free designs for our Christmas Stitch-a-Long! We hope you kept up, and not only downloaded them all for free, but also made the time for a little embroidery in between everything else you have to do.

I'm sure I speak for a lot of us when I say I'm starting to feel a little stressy. So much left to do before the 25th! The powers that be are trying to drag me out of the office, away from the sewing machines and out into the hubbub... employees are looking for time off (what?!!) and to be honest, I am really starting to need a break myself. Then tonight I am in Boston and tomorrow night in New York... sounds pretty glamorous, (read: exhausting) doesn't it! 

So for the Christmas Stitch-a-Long, we all decided on a QUICK finish! This is a first for San Francisco Stitch Co.-- we decided to do something easy. But it will still be beautiful. Promise.

Gather all of your embroidery stitch outs together-- hopefully you will have four! Three would be fine, two's a little skimpy, and one-- well, move on from this tutorial and Google "How do I make a potholder?" XOX

Mark the centers of your designs with an washable fabric marker and then use the centerpoint to draw a 7-1/2" x 7-1/2" square evenly around your design. Confirm that it looks centered and then cut. Tear or cut away excess stabilizer for a softer finished piece, if desired. You can see our blocks above, and the back of the gingerbread house design.

Arrange your blocks in the order that you'd like-- we're going with a horizontal format for our coffee table. You might choose to stitch the blocks vertically for a wallhanging. (Put it on your door with the Merry Christmas block on top!) Or you could do two over two for a more square table topper. Sew them together with 1/4" seams.

We usually press seams open when the same fabric is on both sides-- we won't be stitching in the ditch here-- we'll be free motion quilting and trying to get those seams to disappear.

Now you'll need a beautiful Christmas print-- there's a plethora of those around at this time of year.  This is "Tole Christmas," a Moda collection that came out last  year, and we were saving it for something special, but why wait! It is SO pretty. We are going to use the top print...

Cut two pieces 28-1/2" x 3-1/2" and two 3-1/2" x 7-1/2." Stitch the longer pieces to the top and bottom of your runner, and press the seams toward the embroidery. Then cut four cornerstones 3-1/2" x 3-1/2"-- we used a matching red print from the same collection.

Note that "quick" does not have to mean shoddy-- instead of cutting our red fabric haphazardly, we fussy cut so that once it is bound, the design will be perfectly centered in that square as shown by the white lines. Little details like that just say "quality," and it just took an extra minute to do.

Stitch your cornerstones to each end of the remaining border pieces, and press away from the cornerstones. Then stitch these two pieces to the runner. The seams will nest... and... 

... we have a little ta-da moment... all in a little over an hour! 

If you have time, or maybe you want to gift this, just bat and back, stitch in the ditch, bind and be done. We are just putting ours on display as is for now... in those glorious quiet days between Christmas and New Year's we'll come back to it and do some more free motion quilting. We give away so many of our samples every year, but we're thinking this one's a keeper. Look... it fits the coffee table perfectly!

So it's a wrap on Christmas Stitch-a-Long 2017. I have noted and appreciated that some of you still find making a PDF from this blog post difficult, so here's the compromise: if you want your table runner before Christmas, you have to use this, but if you are willing to wait, I will post a follow-up on the website, and maybe ours will even be finished by then. So like I always tell my family and friends, EVERYONE can be happy. XOX.
There are still lots of things on our to-do list before the end of the year, including finishing our Countdown to Christmas Advent Calendars, and the last Flower Block of the Month, so stay tuned! And we hope to have Christmas tree photos from Boston and NY to share.

XOX Carol