Throwback Thursday - Log Cabin Christmas Tree and Doctor Who cross stitches

My friend Dawn has the most magnificent Christmas Quilt. It features a huge christmas tree made out of log cabin blocks and decorated with appliqued toys, all needle turned, and a beautiful bow. There are also elves dancing around the tree. Its superb... and I don't have a picture of it. It fascinated me, not so much for the gorgeous embellishments but for the tree itself, and the way it was shaped by the log cabin blocks, a combination of green, cream background, red pot and brown for the trunk. Some were all one colour and others were a mix of the two. I loved it. Dawn no longer had the pattern nor could she remember the name of it. She had made it many years ago in a workshop/class situation in another town. So while it was hanging in our club rooms for Christmas decorations, I took careful note of it and recorded the arrangement of the blocks. I didn't want to make mine as big as hers. Mine was to be a wall hanging. Hers was big enough to be a bed quilt. I was also not interested in the embellishments... just the tree itself.

With Dawn's tree details as a guide I worked out my own pattern for a tree. I decided on my scale  (1 inch cut squares coming down to half inch finished) and worked out how many of each sized piece I would need for my blocks in each colour. I cut my pieces and stored them in individual zip lock bags till I got to sewing them up. I got the tree finished in the lead up to Christmas 2012.

 At the same time I also finished an advent calendar Christmas wall hanging with pockets for you to put whatever you liked in. I decided that I would put Christmas decorations in the pockets and "hang" them on my log cabin tree. (using little gold safety pins) I  started to look for suitable small decorations for me to use.

Our daughter, known on the blog as Fangirl had been living in the UK for 13 months and flew home for Christmas. She is an brilliant cross stitcher and designs her own patterns around her geeky interests of Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Diskworld etc Her dad, Fixit Guy, also loves Doctor Who and she had made for him a set of Doctor Who character Christmas Decoration. She had made them on plastic canvas and we realised that they were perfect to go into the pockets of the Advent calendar and hang on the log cabin Christmas tree. Fangirl has her own blog here and an Etsy shop where she sells her patterns by PDF download. She has some great patterns available for the Geek in you life. There is a selection of her patterns on this page in the side bar

She hadn't made enough different characters. Over her time in Australia before she returned to her job in the UK we brain stormed what other Doctor Who characters she could include. Her knowledge and love of Doctor Who was mainly centred around the new series ie from the 9th Doctor. Her dad and I have a more extensive background in it so were able to come up with a few that she didn't know about.

For Christmas the next year there were more figures to fill all the pockets. Such fun. My photographs aren't the best but hopefully you will get the idea. I tried to put them in orcder but when I then went to label them they all jumped out of order again and not sure how to

The 1st Doctor

the 2nd Doctor

The 3rd Doctor

The 4th Doctor

    

The 6th Doctor

The 7th Doctor

The 8th Doctor

The 9th Doctor

The 11th Doctor

                            

Donna

Ros

River

The TARDIS

 

Martha