I worked on this bookmark over the past couple of weeks to gift to my pen-pal who is an avid reader. I had ordered linen sheets from Bed Threads several years ago (I do not recommend—very prone to thinning and tearing) and they came in small linen bags, so I repurposed one of them to use as the backing. The rest are bits and pieces from my small but growing mound of fabric scraps. I forgot to measure it before mailing, but I think it’s roughly 2.5″ x 6″.
This is the first bookmark I’ve made and it was a learning experience. For the next one, I’m thinking I’ll put in some interfacing or make an opening to slide in a piece of cardstock to give the bookmark some sturdiness.
Now that my GMK Indigo-inspired desk mat is done, it’s time to make the second component (of three) of the Indigo-themed desk setup: the USB cable.
Side Note: I initially wanted to write this post simply to take you along while I put a cable together. However, if you were interested in making your own, I think you could take this post as somewhat instructional, and I have tried to explain and document my steps with that possibility in mind. Though I must add that I am a hobbyist and my skills are reflective of that.
Now, before we start, we’ll need some supplies!
These are what I would consider the essential cable parts required:
28 AWG 4-core shielded wire
Paracord 550 lb
USB-A 2.0 connector + housing/cover
USB-C 2.0 connector + housing/cover
3:1 Heat shrink tubing (sizes: 1/2″ + 3/8″)
Clockwise from top left: 4-core cable, USB-A + USB-C parts, heat shrink, paracord.
For this particular cable, I’m using FS Navy Blue paracord and red heat shrink. I’ve purchased cable parts from different sources over the past couple of years and will leave links to them at the end of the post.
I usually add PET braided sleeving (e.g. Techflex) on top of the paracord as an extra protective layer, but have chosen to forego it for this particular cable assembly. The paracord I’m using for Indigo is a great colour match to the mat and keycaps and I would like it to show through as is.
I will also be attaching a 5-pin GX-16 aviator connector, but I’ll cover that process in a follow-up post. Aviator and other similar detachable connectors, when used in mechanical keyboard cables, are usually added for aesthetic purposes, but I also like that they weigh down my cables and keep them in place on my desk.
Both of these items are optional, come in many colours and styles, and can be combined to make a cable more appealing.
With the cable components covered, we’ll also need some basic tools to assemble it, pictured below.
Top row from left: Wire strippers, needle-nose pliers, wire cutters, heat gun. Bottom: Fine-point tweezers and small scissors.Top/Middle: Soldering iron, solder, flux, protective/magnifying eyewear. Bottom: Helping hands station.
Now that we have everything we need, here are the steps I took to assemble this mechanical keyboard USB cable.
Your cable length can be as long or short as you’d like, whatever suits your needs, but I think the average length is around 5 ft. For my setup and the distance between my keyboard and my computer’s connection ports, 4.5 ft. works well. So, to start, cut your desired length of cable wire, and cut your paracord about 4–6″ longer.
Pull out the white nylon strands inside the paracord [Fig. 1A] and feed the cable wire into the paracord sleeve bit by bit [Fig. 1B–C]. You lose some paracord length as it expands to accommodate the cable, that’s why we cut it a little longer initially.
This process can either go smoothly or frustratingly. There are times when I can easily glide the cable through the paracord I’m using, and there are times when the cable snags on the paracord or the paracord itself is tighter in certain sections than others and more challenging to feed the cable through.
When the cable is eventually fed through completely, make sure you have some cable poking out on each end that’s not covered by paracord, I usually give myself about an inch on each side. If your paracord was too long, you can cut it back a little to achieve the desired outcome [Fig. 1D].
Fig. 1A–D: Sleeving the cable with paracord.
Using the wire strippers, and taking care not to slice too deeply, cut into the cable’s insulation just enough to separate it and carefully pull it off. This will reveal the cable’s inner core [Fig. 2A–D].
Fig. 2A–D: Stripping the cable’s insulation.
Fig. 2.1: Cable Anatomy
The cable I use has two layers of shielding protecting the four individual wires within: a layer of tin-plated copper wire mesh surrounding an aluminum foil wrapping. Depending on where you purchase your cable, yours might only have the aluminum foil shielding (or none at all). If so, simply ignore any steps that don’t apply to the cable you have.
Proceed by twisting the outer shield strands together to move them out of the way. You can twist them all together into one thick braid or separate them into two bundles making them thinner and easier to maneuver [Fig. 3A–C].
Some people cut the shield strands off, but they should be kept to act as a grounding component (that’s what Reddit my research told me, so I leave them intact). The aluminum foil shielding, however, can be safely cut off and discarded [Fig. 3D].
Fig. 3A–D: Dealing with the cable shields.
From here on out, be prepared, things get finicky and errors are prone to be made when working with things this small. Be patient. You may have to do over certain steps—I often do! In fact, here’s a short video I filmed last year that shows me doing just that. I’ve started each cable I’ve put together aiming for perfection, knowing I won’t get there, and each has presented challenges and provided opportunities to learn and build on my skills.
Soldering process in making a basic keyboard USB cable.
Okay, back to the cable. The next step is to strip the ends of the four individual wires. I tend to give myself a lot of room to work with, so I position the wire stripper a few millimetres from the base of each wire and only partially pull away its insulation. I do this to keep each wire’s strands held together, making things easier and cleaner to work with in later steps [Fig. 4A–D]. I then repeat this process on the opposite end of the cable.
Fig. 4A-D: Stripping the cable’s inner wires.
Next, it’s best to tin (cover with solder) the wires we’ve just exposed. Each insulated coloured wire is made up of a bunch of super thin copper strands, and the solder binds them together making them behave as one.
Using the helping hands, clamp the cable and make sure the wires are spread out evenly. Apply solder flux on each wire to help keep the solder flowing [Fig. 5A]. Then heat up each wire one by one with the soldering iron and feed in some solder to coat it [Fig. 5B-C].
I then do the same thing to the USB-A connector. Use another helping hand/clamp to hold the connector with the concave terminals facing you, and once again apply flux and solder to each of its four terminals where the wires will be placed [Fig. 5D]. You can also see these steps illustrated more clearly in the video I shared above.
Fig. 5A-D: Preparing the wires and USB-A connector for soldering.
With the USB-A connector terminals pre-soldered, position the cable as close to the connector as you can. Estimate how much length of wire you need to securely fit each wire into its destination slot and cut off the excess wire [Fig. 6A].
Following the USB-A 1.0 and 2.0 universal standard, the order in which the wires are attached is: black for ground (GND) on the far left, followed first by the green wire (D+) then the white wire for data transfer (D-). Lastly, on the far right goes the red wire for power supply (+5v VCC).
I’ve seen some people online reverse the order of the green and white wires…the cable might still work, but it would technically be incorrect, so be sure to follow the diagram I’ve shown here instead. If your cable has different wire colours, I suggest you do some research before proceeding.
Using fine-point tweezers, hold the first wire in place above its spot, then apply heat with the iron to the solder present in the terminal just long enough to melt it and place the wire into it. Remove the iron and keep holding the wire in place for a second or two until the solder solidifies again, encasing the wire within [Fig. 6B–D]. Repeat for each wire. It doesn’t matter which wire you start with, I tend to do the red wire first and work my way to black, but there’s no right or wrong way of doing this.
Fig. 6A–D: Soldering the wires to the USB-A connector pads.
Yay! The hard part of soldering on the USB-A connector is now done!
To offer the wires some protection, I place a strip of painter’s tape around them [Fig. 7A–B]. It’s mainly to ensure that the wires don’t wiggle around after assembly and to prevent any exposed parts from coming into contact and causing an electric short—ideally, there shouldn’t be any uninsulated visible wire, but I have yet to perfect my technique and my results are often inconsistent. Some people dab some hot glue on the wires instead, but I’m too lazy to bother with a hot glue gun so haven’t yet tried that option.
Then, keeping the side of the connector we were working on facing towards you, slide the connector into the larger piece of its housing [Fig. 7B–C]. Make sure to push it all the way in so that the white plastic of the connector isn’t visible at the bottom and the top edge of it is flush with the opening at the top of the housing [Fig. 7D].
Fig. 7A–D: Taping and inserting the connector into its housing.
Grabbing the smaller housing cover with the protruding wings [Fig. 7D], position it over the bottom part of the connector that’s still visible [Fig. 8A]. There are little bumps and tabs on the sides of the bottom cover piece that correspond with windows in the larger one. Tuck the shield wire in, keeping it down close to the cable and inside the wings below, then line things up and click the cover down into place [Fig. 8B–C].
At this point, you can trim the shield wire to length while it’s still trapped within the open wings of the cover [Fig. 8D]. Using pliers, cinch closed the metal wings at the bottom [Fig. 8E]. I like to think of the wings coming together like comforting arms, to give everything a tight cozy hug [Fig. 8F].
Fig. 8A–F: Closing up the USB-A connector housing.
The final step left for the USB-A side of the cable is to apply protective heat shrink tubing for a finished look. Heat shrink comes in different sizes and shrink ratios. For the USB-A side, we’re using 1/2″ 3:1 heat shrink (that means the tubing size is 1/2″ in diameter and shrinks down to a third of its size).
Place a 1.5″ long piece of that heat shrink over the connector [Fig. 9A] and start applying heat, holding the heat gun about 4″ away [Fig. 9B]. Before it shrinks too much, you can make slight adjustments to the tubing’s placement (it tends to slide around a bit at first) to keep it where you’d like. Slowly turn the cable over as you apply heat and keep the heat gun steadily moving over the area until the heat shrink tube is nice and snug [Fig. 9C–E].
Fig. 9A–E: Applying heat shrink tubing.
Congrats—one side of the cable is now completed!
This side of the cable is often referred to as the “host” side, because it connects to the computer which powers it. The USB-C side we’ll be working on next is often referred to as the “device” side because it plugs into the keyboard. For custom mechanical keyboard cables, host side connectors are traditionally USB-A, and device side connectors are usually USB-C because keyboard PCBs are nowadays commonly designed/equipped with USB-C receptacles to plug into.
Much of what comes next for assembling the USB-C end is similar to what we’ve done so far.
Since the core wires were already stripped when we prepared both sides of the cable earlier, we start with the pre-tinning process by adding flux then adding heat and solder to them. Check [Fig. 5A–C] for reference.
Then we prepare the USB-C connector pads as we did the USB-A connector terminals. Apply a blob of flux [Fig. 10A] to each pad, followed by adding solder [Fig. 10B–C], which I usually do with a pre-tinned iron tip. Pre-tinning the pads makes the often troublesome and awkward process of soldering on the wires a bit easier. Again, you can see this process more clearly in the video I shared above.
With the helping hands, bring the cable wires and connector as close to each other as possible, and just as we did previously, measure how much exposed wire is needed for each colour to reach and fit on its corresponding pad and cut off the excess [Fig. 10D].
Fig. 10A–D: Pre-tinning the wires and USB-C connector pads.
For the USB-C connections, follow the same colour order as we did before. One by one, hold each wire above its pre-soldered pad with the fine-point tweezers and apply heat with the iron to the solder just long enough to melt it and place the wire into it. As before, remove the iron and keep the wire in place for a second or two until the solder solidifies and the wire is held firmly in place [Fig. 11A–D].
And there you have it, a soldered USB-C connector!
Fig. 11A–D: Soldering on the USB-C connections.
Looking at my work here, it’s not very good. First, I actually had to fix the green wire. You can see that it was a bit too long and had a kink [Fig. 11C], so I removed and snipped off a bit of it to make it straighter [Fig. 11D]. Every time I make a cable, I aim to do a better job with my soldering and wire prep…I can’t seem to get their lengths just right, and see too much exposed wire (the insulation melts away when the wires heat up). Also, the connector itself isn’t centred perfectly with the cable, but these observations just remind me to try to do better next time. In my defence though, my camera setup was in the way to capture this process and I couldn’t see or reach what I was doing as well as I normally would.
If your results look similar to mine, don’t sweat it. You’ll still end up with a working cable as long as you make sure no two wires are at risk of coming into contact with one another. You could even wrap very thin pieces of tape around one or two individual wires if you’re concerned. Just as importantly, make sure that you also don’t have any solder bridges…you should have four separate solder “blobs”, one for each pad/wire, otherwise you’ll have an electric short.
Anyway, you can now add the tape around the wires [Fig. 12A] and proceed with putting on the connector cover. For this side of the cable I had shaped the shielding wire into two separate braids (note to self: this is the better way to do it, remember this for future cables). Starting with the cover piece that has the wings at the bottom, place it behind the connector and hold the two shield braids down towards the cable, keeping them tucked inside the open wings [Fig. 12B]. Bring the other cover piece over, and while sandwiching the connector between the two halves, click it into place [Fig. 12C]. Trim the two shield braids so they’re not poking out too much below the wings [Fig. 12D] , then pinch the wings closed around the cable with the pliers [Fig. 12E–F].
Finally, apply heat shrink to this side as was done on the other (not pictured).
Fig. 12A–F: Adding and closing up the USB-C housing.
And our work here is done! Woohoo!
The completed (for now) Indigo-themed USB cable…with its matching desk mat.
Cable-Making Resources
Below is the short list of stores that I’ve personally purchased my cable supplies from, except for the heat shrink, which I had purchased previously from a small custom cable business that no longer exists. When I do purchase heat shrink tubing in the future, I’ll probably be using WireCare.
I started with cable kits, and recommend doing so if you’ve never put one together before, for the convenience of one-stop shopping and not worrying about gathering supplies. Eventually, as I kept practicing and making more cables, I wanted a bit more freedom with quantities and supplies, so I started to buy components from various sources/sellers.
TLDR: I made my own hand-sewn desk mat to pair with the GMK Indigo keycap set. I kind of winged it from start to finish and am thrilled by how it turned out.
I fell in love with GMK Indigo when I first saw the set back in early 2022. Taking inspiration from Japan’s denim fashion culture and art of sashiko mending, the set’s colours and design spoke to both my love of denim and traditional Japanese craftsmanship: simple, layered, timeless, artistic, and durable. The keycap set’s novelties evoked memories—not my own, yet intimately familiar—of many dedicated hours spent mending worn fabrics, bringing them back to life through countless stitches, weaving history and meaning throughout. Because of this, I knew right away that I wanted to make my own desk mat to go with the set.
The keycaps arrived in late 2023 and I spent the first couple of months sourcing my fabrics. I didn’t have much in my possession to work with and purchasing new fabric would not be in keeping with the intention behind the project of using worn and upcycled materials. So, I foraged through my mother’s fabric stash of offcuts collected over the years decades, and searched in thrift stores through piles of children’s clothing (because they’re much smaller and I wouldn’t have to feel so bad about cutting them up), looking for items that had just the right colour-matched shades and hues of blues to create my Indigo-inspired mat.
Around that same time I was also learning about the Japanese practices of boro and sashiko. That quickly lead the YouTube algorithm to introduce me to the practice of slow stitch, to which I was immediately and utterly drawn.
In January 2024, when I had enough fabrics to work with, I brought them all together to explore layout options. I eliminated the light colours and fabrics that wouldn’t work, focused on the darker navies, and proceeded to move the pieces around to see how I might arrange them. It was all random at first, but then I brought that large triangular piece to the front, saw a mountain, and it hit me, Mount Fuji! I took the idea and ran with it, added a sun/moon, a cloud, and a few more little mountains. I liked where this was going!
A: Initial selection of materials. | B–C: Playing with layout. | D: An image begins to emerge.Final design with top layer roughly basted and some initial floss colour picks.
Once I was happy with the scene, the next step was to roughly baste all the pieces down to the backing, and with that done, it was time to stitch and secure them into place!
Then it was somehow and suddenly September. I slowly managed to stitch (that’s a lot of s-words) the collage pieces down and remove most of the basting stitches save for around the edges. It was at this time that I also decided, as though things weren’t already hard enough and taking too long, that I was going to make my desk mat double-sided! Feeling creative, and inspired by a whole bunch of slow stitch videos on YouTube (I highly recommend giving Kathryn’s channel, @k3n.clothtales, a visit), I played around with making three square slow stitch collages that I could attach to the back side of the mat. Actually, I made four squares, but one of them doesn’t work as part of the series so I pretend it doesn’t exist. I didn’t know how or when I was going to attach them, or how I was going to attach the back itself, but those were problems for another day.
The collage pieces stitched in place, and a view of the stitches on the back.
The squares were so much fun to work on and they were small enough that I didn’t feel too overwhelmed with making them. Unfortunately, I didn’t document any of my process. I just cut up pieces of scrap fabric, laid them down in a pleasing enough fashion, and played with the stitching on top.
By this point I had yet to start putting any decorative stitching on the mat itself, I found this step somewhat daunting. Perhaps the three squares were my way of creating a distraction from the sizeable task that lay ahead of me, or perhaps that little side quest was exactly what I needed to get myself into the flow and prepare for what was to come. Either way, eventually, without much thought, I chose a floss colour and started on a little corner of the mat, then moved on to another. Then life happened and I didn’t return to the project for another couple of months.
Three square (5″x5″) slow-stitched patches to go on the flip side of the mat.
I picked things up again last month in early February. A few days later, fortuitously, a friend reached out and asked if I was interested in doing “stitching hours” together. I leapt at the chance. This helped enormously with my momentum and excitement to keep working on the project. The following two weeks passed by in a blur. Most days were spent stitching for an hour or two. On occasion, I was sat down hunched over the mat for most of the day, lost in the rhythm of stitching row after row, section after section. I could have kept going. I could have kept adding more layers, more stitches, more complexity. But at some point I stepped back from the mat, took in my progress as a whole, and was very pleased with where things were.
This decorative stitching part of the process was wondrously full of little moments of curiosity and discovery. There are always little questions and mini-choices to be made as one stitches along: “Do I stop here or do I continue on this line for another stitch or two? Should I make such a leap with my needle, or should I tie off and start again in a different spot? What colour do I transition to over here and what direction do I want to stitch in? That stitch was really wonky, but is it charmingly wonky or distractingly askew?” And so on. And as nervous as I was to begin the decorative stitching at first, I absolutely loved seeing the texture and depth being added as I went along. The world melts away in those moments, between one stitch to the next, my mind and body engaged fully in the process and joy of creative exploration, knowing that no mistakes can be made that cannot be unmade, and, given the hand-made nature of this work, trusting that imperfections were not only acceptable, but crucial to however the project was going to turn out.
Decorative stitching completed—and a hint of what I’ll be working on next!
I adore the buckling in the fabric that happens due to tension inconsistencies…I find those ripples between the rows of thread absolutely captivating, alluding to comfort and warmth, and evoking, for me, a sense of generational and cultural wisdom. I also grew up around the ocean, and I see the sand waves in those tactile ripples, I hear them saying, “We were patiently and steadily shaped, purposefully crafted by hand, pass after pass, with love and dedication.”
I took these photos long ago: the sand waves and clear waters of the beach of my childhood.
With the decorative stitches done, the next challenge was attaching the back piece, which I still wasn’t certain how to do. I thought about machine sewing the front and back right-sides-together and flipping the mat inside out, therefore eliminating the need for edge binding. But I still needed to crop the mat to its final dimensions and that’s when I realized that my measurements were not as flexible as I previously thought…the seam allowance needed for this option would mean cropping too much from the image. Pivoting, I chose instead to extend the backing fabric by about an inch all around the mat so that I could do a double fold over to the front to create the binding.
Let me tell you, this part took forever. I couldn’t easily shift the top piece around to centre it on the back fabric to trim because the batting would cling to the fabric as soon as I put it down…imagine having to reposition peel-and-stick wallpaper by having to take it off entirely each time. Then I kept noticing how out of square my mat was, which didn’t make sense because I was using the proper tools to ensure squareness, but I would line up the square sides, trim the lopsided excess, only to have the issue present itself all over again elsewhere. It frustrated me greatly until I decided that things were square enough and I couldn’t afford to keep trimming down any more of my piece (and peace). I folded over the binding and pinned it all in place.
Trimming and folding over the backing fabric to create the edge binding.
As for securing the back, I didn’t want to quilt all three layers together because I didn’t want the stitches from the back to show on the front. I decided that sewing the back to the batting, just as I did on the front, would suffice. I explored my options, first by doing straight running stitches lengthwise along the back, but after doing a few rows, I didn’t like the look of it and took out the stitches. Then I tried doing cross stitches in a loose grid pattern and ended up sticking with that. I stitched the back using regular Gütermann polyester sewing thread because I had already pinned the edge binding closed (not undoing that, thank you), and, being that it’s finer and smoother than embroidery floss, the thread knots would be small enough to pull through the fabric from the outside in to hide between the layers.
Cross grid on the back and the DMC floss colours used on this project. From left to right: 221, 939, 336, 803, 311, 3750, 930, 931, 932, 157, 01.
With the back piece secured, I sewed the binding in place with a basic hemming stitch, taking the pins out as I went along. I was planning on using my sewing machine to add a topstitch around the border for extra security and to give the mat a more “finished” look, but when I was done with hemming the binding, I realized I didn’t really need or want to do that.
As a final touch, I added a little signature label to the pocket. The pocket, by the way, makes me smile to no end. The mat’s final size is about 32.5″ x 13.5″ (83cm x 34cm).
Close-up shot of the finished binding—I’m very happy with it.
If you’re wondering about the three slow stitch squares I made to add to the back, well, when I was done, I looked at my finished mat and loved it so much that I knew, whether hanging on a wall or sitting on my desk under a keyboard, I’d never want to turn it over. So, I set them aside to either use in a different project or perhaps frame for display.
And now that I’ve finished making the mat, I must say that I am proud of this accomplishment (though it feels uncomfortable to self-praise), considering that I was basically figuring out the steps as I went along and it took me over a year to complete. I had no idea what I was going to do for this mat or how it was going to take shape when I initially decided I wanted to make one, having never made anything like it before. Even with whatever research I had done, I had no clear vision (thank you, aphantasia) to guide me. I think I just had an out-of-focus image in my mind of a “blueish mat that looked cohesive in an abstract sort of way”. I found this to be both worrying and freeing…but thankfully, I experienced more of the latter.
Gallery of close-up photos.
The practice of slow stitch is all about letting go of expectation and focusing one’s efforts and joys on the process of making. And though I normally struggle greatly with not knowing where I’m heading, this project surprised me with how readily I was able to embrace the mystery and discovery inherent to the process. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get nervous at times with whatever choices I had to make, but I allowed myself to reach for the seam ripper whenever stitches were too “off” to accept, and that helped a great deal with keeping myself moving towards the finish line.
On a related note, I wish to also share one of the biggest lessons I learned from this project: I used cotton batting as a backing for the top layer—this was a mistake. The thread kept pulling out batting fibres with almost every stitch I took, and while I tried to figure out ways to minimize this happening, it often felt like a futile effort. It all worked out in the end, but going forward, I’ll rely on plain cotton or linen fabric, such as used sheets or tea towels, instead. I do like the padding that the batting provides, however, but I’ll have to figure out a different approach. [Edit: I think using cotton fleece, sandwiched between the layers, could work to provide that bit of padding without being a nuisance to work with.]
Next up: making the matching USB cable and building the keyboard to bring it all together. And after that…a GMK Matcha mat, perhaps? But I’m getting ahead of myself.
At last, here it is, the full view of my completed GMK Indigo-inspired handmade desk mat!
P.S. It was a challenge taking consistently decent photographs while documenting this project. Lighting and colours vary widely. I did my best.
I’ve wanted a small skirt for my 6′ holiday tree for years but could never find one I liked. They are usually too big for my needs and the styles not to my taste. So this year I decided to finally make one myself! I looked online for some patterns, but the ones I liked were all for quilted skirts which required more time, energy, and fabric than I had at hand. I was hoping for something simple and quick to make that had some weight to it without needing to be layered and quilted…and I really didn’t have it in me to go fabric shopping/thrifting.
So I just let the project sit in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks. But then I happened to be at the dollar store a few days ago, walking down the holiday decoration aisle, and saw they had a bunch of Christmas-themed placemats piled together on a shelf. The ones on top looked to be made of either vinyl or some type of woven straw, but an idea had formed in my mind, so I lifted them up to see what I might find under them. A few layers down I found several 18″ × 12″ plaid woven-style mats that were of acceptable colours and had the right kind of weight/stiffness that could possibly work for my needs. I looked at the labels: 80% cotton (20% polyester) and machine washable. Perfect! Without really knowing how I was going to use them—but knowing that I wouldn’t feel too bad if I ended up messing them up or not using them at all and giving them away—I bought six of them to explore with (four green, two red) for $2.50 each.
I realized pretty quickly that trying to make a round skirt out of them wasn’t going to work, so I decided a hexagonal skirt was the way to go. I’m not sure if there was a more efficient way of cutting up the mats, but I did some initial calculations and digital sketches to get me started and then proceeded from there. I started to cut out the trapezoid-shaped pieces from the mats…and that’s when I realized that the red mats were not equal in height to the green ones…but I rolled with it. After cutting out the pieces, I arranged them in the desired order. I was initially going to stitch the pieces together by hand, but the material frays easily, so used the sewing machine instead. I also cut strips of cotton from an old-and-falling-apart pair of pyjama pants to use as binding for the two raw edges on the end pieces where the skirt remains open.
I honestly didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing initially (or throughout most of the process), but I’m so happy with how it turned out! It looks very much unpolished, but that adds to the charm, and is the perfect size and look that I wanted for my tree! Not at all bad for $18! I might eventually add some ties or buttons on the end pieces to complete the look, but it’s unnecessary.
Finished size is 28″ across between the parallel/straight sides of the hexagon, and 32″ point to point.
How I decided to arrange the pieces.Where the skirt remains open, I decided to cut up strips from an old and tattered pair of pyjama pants to use as binding.It’s all coming together now.The completed skirt under the tree!
