Gingerbread Christmas tree by Victoria Sampler 4: how to assemble the tree

I am making the Gingerbread Christmas tree by Thea Dueck of Victoria Sampler at the moment from her chart pack booklet. The chart pack is available from  here. I’ve now completed all the cross stitch, and added all the beads, so now it’s time to assemble the tree.

Here’s my four completed panels:

I backstitched a base piece (this is optional if you’re not going to make this design as an etui, but I felt it would feel more substantial with a closed off base).

Then I made paper templates of the shapes, that fit just inside the backstitched lines.

From those, I made a mount board template for each piece of stitching (i.e. one base, and four tree sides). The square base has pieces of double sided tape on it already, to stick the felt padding onto.

For padding, I stuck a piece of oversized felt on each template piece with the double sided tape, then trimmed it down later with scissors:

The stitched pieces were trimmed to have seam allowances on each side of half an inch:

Then I laced the stitching over the mount board templates. The points of the tree sides are fiddly to do – the point has to be as neat as possible, so that these will all meet up together and not be bulky. I had to trim the fabric back quite hard, and keep making tacking stitches to hold it all down. I laced from side to side first.

The pointy bit at the top is stitched down last:

Make sure, as you’re stitching down the top, that the mount board template doesn’t get ‘pinched’ and push its way down – the board should stay within the backstitched outline.

The final lacing goes from top to bottom, after doing the sides, to hold it all together:

Then the corners are mitred:

Each panel then looks like this, with the backstitching just showing at the edges. Then each panel is laced to the adjoining one with Perle 12 white thread, and the base fitted into place last, using the same method:

Ta-da!!! Here’s my little gingerbread tree, all ready for Christmas!

And here’s the base of it, to show how the lacing of the panels is done:

Isn’t it pretty?! I want to get all my decorations out now, to display it with the other Gingerbread buildings that I’ve made.

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