Santa's Night Tree

Santa’s Night Tree by Hello From Liz Mathews — a 152×151 chart designed to be finished into a 3D cone-shaped tree, not flat. The scene reads bottom-to-top: a row of three snow-dusted townhouses with their windows lit and tiny carolers and a fox passing along the snow at the front, a crescent moon and clouds in the middle band, and Santa’s full sleigh team flying across the upper night sky toward the tip. A plaid red-sage-and-gold band runs around the bottom hem like a tree skirt, with a small block reserved for stitcher initials and year.

This was my second Jingle Ball 2023 class finish, after the Wintergreen Santa ornament and before the Candy Cane Biscornu, Specialty Stitches I, and the Jingle All the Way Block — five classes from the same event.

The chart’s recommended fabric is 36ct Topaz from Fiber on a Whim (now OOP, with Sapphire as the designer-suggested alternative). I went with 36ct Picture This Plus Mystic Edinburgh linen — a deep mottled hand-dyed navy with hints of indigo and black wash, which gives the night sky genuine depth instead of the flatter solid-blue Topaz reads as. The unstitched fabric is the night.

Threads are Weeks Dye Works per the chart palette — Onyx, Seagull, Flatfish, Tin Roof, Havana, Grasshopper, Red Rock, Bullfrog, Molasses, Schneckly, Fawn, and White Lightning. The chart includes DMC conversions if you’d rather skip the overdyes, but the slow tonal shifts in the Weeks colours are most of what makes the houses, the reindeer team, and the plaid border read as folk-art rather than flat solid colour.

Finished as a cone, per the chart’s intended construction:

• Three plastic-snowflake charms attached at the top in a stepped cluster, in place of a star topper
• White lace edging around the bottom hem
• Red cotton backing showing as the seam line down the back
• Mounted on a small rust-metal-and-wood spool as a base — a vintage thread spool re-purposed as a stand, which suits the folk-art mood of the chart better than any clean modern base would

Finished November 20, 2023.