A few years ago I had stitched this Joy Tree. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I’ve had it on my refrigerator. After all, I figure if you typically display your children’s works of art on the fridge then why can’t I display mine? So I did.

Well, my mother-in-law fell in love with this piece. I wanted to give it to her, but I wanted to make it into something other than a wall hanging. There are only so many things that you can hang on the wall and I didn’ want to make Karen have to do that. It was about the right size, though, to cover the weekday Missal that she uses when she goes to daily mass. She has a cover for her Sunday Missal, but not the week day.

I had to figure out what I was doing before I actually did anything with the stitched piece. The only scrap fabric that I had on hand, however, was this skull and cross bones pattern. Jay laughed when he saw that I had my Sunday Missal covered with the skulls and crossbones. He can be a bit irreverant. lol

Once I made sure that it would fit my missal then I was able to copy the pattern to the Joy Tree piece. I didn’t follow any particular pattern, I just went with what I thought would work. Luckily it did. lol. Unfortunately I can’t give you step-by-step instructions. It seemed pretty straight forward with very simple mechanics. Karen loved it, so I guess that’s all that matters.

I had help when measuring and cutting the fabric. Chester is so helpful, isn’t she? I had to move her foot out of the way so that I didn’t cut it off, but she didn’t seem to mind too much. Silly cat!