I already posted this on my Harry Potter-blog, but I thought I could share it here as well. I’m taking a bit of a break from cosplay this month to focus on making gifts and getting in holiday spirits! This was one of many projects – but some I cannot share, since they will be gifts.

Hope you’re all enjoying your December, regardless of whether you’re celebrating Christmas or not!

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I’m slowly working towards making our Christmas tree more Harry Potter-themed. This year’s additions were decorations gifted from my friends for Christmas, a few that I bought myself at a convention earlier in the year and – the piece de resistance – a carpet to put under the tree that I made myself. I’m actually not sure how to call it in English. My research told me that at least in America (I’m not sure about UK), people use tree skirts instead. But these go over the foot of the tree, whereas in Denmark, we put what we call: “Juletræstæppe” or directly translated “Christmas tree blanket” under the whole thing.

In any case – whatever the name, I made one. I used the embroidery machine I got for Christmas last year to embroider gold/red panels that I stitched together with a pretty green/gold fabric. I wanted to add some gold ribbon as well, but I haven’t found quite the right one. My original plan was the make the embroidery files as well, but unfortunately, I had some issues with the software (mainly that my trial expired and it’s too damn expensive to buy, haha). Luckily, I started the project just as all the shops were having black friday sales, so I managed to get 70% off, making the files quite affordable. I’ll add links to all of them later.

Each of them took around 1-2 hours to complete, and I think the biggest one is 38,000 stitches or so. I changed the colour schemes so that they all matched with just 3 tones of the yellowy gold. I chose to use Gunold Sulky embroidery thread, because it has that silky shine, but it works really well in my machine. I have bought some metallic threads as well, but these are supposedly hard to work with and seeing as the entire thing had around 250,000 stitches, I went with the safe option.

Each square is 30*30 cms. I originally made them 40*40 cms, but realized after finishing that I should have placed the embroideries diagonally on the fabric, but luckily I was able to turn them into 30×30 cms on the diagonal, so I didn’t have to redo them.
The diamonds are also 30cms on each side and 45degree at the top and bottom and 135 degrees at the sides. There’s 8 squares and 8 diamonds. I first stitched them all together, then I placed it on top of my backing fabric and used it as a template to cut it. I may add gold ribbon around the squares later if I find any – but so far I haven’t found one I liked, so I left it out.

Here’s the files I used:
Owl
Broom
Stag/Patronus
Dragon
Unicorn
Griffin/Hippogriff 
Wand
Flying Key