In the ten years I've had my own tree to decorate, I've never really had a tree skirt. I usually try to hurry up and get the gifts under it so no one notices. But this year I finally got around to making a tree skirt, and it was such a fun project! The best part is how much money I saved. Have you noticed how expensive cute tree skirts can be? This felt skirt can be as simple or elaborate as you want, but doesn't have to cost more than a few dollars.
Felt Tree Skirt
I started out with this tutorial from The Paper Pony. She shows you how to take a piece of wool felt (I got mine at JoAnn with a 50% off coupon) and cut it into a pretty scalloped tree skirt. I wanted to dress mine up a bit with some green vines, holly leaves, and white berries. So I gathered some green wool felt, matching embroidery floss, buttons, a needle, scissors, ribbon, and chalk and went to work!
After cutting my scalloped tree skirt, I free-hand cut some holly leaves out of green felt. If you're not comfortable free-hand cutting, try die-cutting your image at your local scrapbook store, or find some clip art that you can print out, cut out, and trace on your felt.
Next I used a piece of chalk to lightly outline my vines around the edge of the skirt, laying the leaves and buttons along it to make sure it looked even.
The next step was the fun part. I put on the 5-hour BBC production of Pride and Prejudice and started stitching. Yes, it took me about 5 hours to stitch all the vines, leaves, and buttons on. I guess that's why tree skirts are so expensive! I did use long stitches to make it go a little faster, and only used three stitches to sew on the leaves (rather than stitching around the edges like I had planned).
My next step is only for all you other crazy crafter out there who love to add tiny details that probably don't need to be added. I am the Queen of over doing it. But I really thought the scallops needed a little white french knot in the middle of each one. This added another 2 hours to my skirt (yikes!), but I LOVE the way it turned out!
My last step was another unnecessary one. I added ribbon ties to keep the skirt in place. I think it would have stayed put without them, but I couldn't help the cuteness factor once again! I cut six pieces of ribbon, each about 2 feet long. Then I doubled-folded the ends over and sewed them down to keep them from fraying. You could also use Fray-Check. Then I sewed two pieces across from each other and tied them in a bow. Repeat with the other two sets of ribbon, spaced out evenly. I really just eye-balled the whole thing since the ribbons are going to be in the back and hardly seen at all!
And voila! Two days later it's finally finished! I'm going to have to use this for at least 10 years to make all that work worth it, but I do love it!
If you want more ideas for easy felt tree skirts, just do a Google search using their "images" tab and you'll find lots of cute ones out there--like these!
