Last week, we were looking at Little Birds, one of our most beloved craft blogs, and found that Stephanie had created a free pattern for these adorable and easy Soft Trees.  We were inspired to make a whole forest of them for our holiday window at Purl Patchwork!  We took Stephanie's template to our neighborhood copy shop and enlarged it, stretched it and shrunk it to come up with all of these different sizes.  We embellished some of the trees with a zigzag stitch and others with French knots or strips of hot pink fabric.

We're not the only one's who've been inspired by this charming pattern, you can see and share photos of lots of Soft Trees at the special Flickr group Stephanie created.

Here are the fabrics we used for our Soft Trees,  from left to right:

Bohemian, designed by Anna Maria Horner for Freespirit Fabrics

Dots + Dotty by P & B Textiles

Belle, designed by Amy Butler for Rowan Fabrics

Windowpane by Pinwheels

Freckles by Freespirit Fabrics

We stuffed our Soft Trees with Natural Cotton Stuffing from Quilter's Dream. 

We used Valdani's beautiful Pearl Cotton to make the French knots.

Update on December 6, 2006 by purl bee

Here are a couple of photos of our little forest at Purl Patchwork!