O' Christmas Tree...

I love vintage buttons and have oodles and oodles of them so I'm always looking for projects in which I can use them. I'm also always looking for projects that I can do while catching up on some of my TV programs...so here's a quick little project that took me one (long) afternoon to to complete...
I've had this shadow box type frame for years so intentionally made my linen square the right size to fit the frame. (It's 7 x 7)

And I got to use a bunch of my white vintage buttons...
You can't see them very well in the picture but I tied little french knots randomly around the background both to "quilt" the piece and to make it look like snow falling...

So here's some quick instructions should you want to make your own.

1. Cut a piece of old white linen about 1/4 inch smaller than your frame. It should be 1/4 inch smaller on each side. (If your frame is 7 x 7 your linen should measure 6 1/2 x 6 1/2) Cut a piece of white felt (or other sturdy fabric) the exact size of your frame. When the stitching on the linen is complete, you will stitch that to the felt to give it some studiness.

2. Lightly draw a tiangle on the linen then draw horizontal lines within the triangle beginning at the top. Your top "branch" will be centered and short, the next branch (about an inch below the first branch) will get a little longer, the next a little longer and so on until your triangle tree has all it's branches.

3. Sew white buttoms haphazardly with red thread along each branch.

4. With green floss stitch in branches here and there to make it look like an evergreen. (I used three strands of green floss)

5. Lightly pencil the phrase "O Christmas Tree" along the bottom of your tree and stitch with red floss. (I used three strands of floss and a simple backstitch)

6. Use white floss and stitch the completed linen piece to your white felt piece then tie french knots randomly around the background to further secure it to the felt.

7. Put the finished piece in your frame and Viola! Since I was using a shadow box type frame I used Fabri-Tac and glued the felt to the inside of the frame to hold it in place.

Happy Stitching!