As many of my friends and family know, I'm not very traditional when it comes to Christmas. Yes, I put up the tree, but there are no Santa's and snowmen for this girl! The colors I choose to decorate with are a bit on the bold end of the spectrum as well. Instead of traditional green, red and white, I prefer pink, turquoise, orange and lime green with pops of iridescent white.
While it is fairly easy to find ornaments and trimmings to match my taste (thank you Target!), I've deemed it IMPOSSIBLE to find a tree skirt to match my style. I've searched online, in stores and everywhere in between with no avail. The solution to my dilemma? Why make my own, of course! Below, I have put together a photo-based tutorial on the creation of my tree skirt.
To start, I ventured over to SAS Fabric by the Pound and bought a yard of this glittery felt for $2.75. It's very sparkly and pretty in real life...the photos do not do it justice!!
After enlisting the help of Nate (for photos and creative assistance), I drew a circle on the backside of the felt using the old string on a marker trick. I found the center of the fabric, held the string on the point and traced my circle.
Next, I cut out the circle. I then drew a line from the outer edge up to the center point and cut the line to create a slit so the skirt could wrap around the tree.
I also added a small circle in the center so the skirt would fit around the base of the tree. When I was done cutting, my fabric looked like this:
And then, the best part...DECORATING! Since I love circles and our tree is primarily covered in round balls, Nate and I decided to decorate with a circle pattern. We pulled out my pile of craft felt, chose some colors and got to cutting. When we finished cutting, we laid out our pattern and started gluing on the circles using a thick, white craft glue.
We covered the outer and inner edge with circles until we ended up with this:
While it looked pretty darn cute, it wasn't QUITE cute enough. After some contemplating, we decided to add circles and stars on the interior (the stars to match the stars and snowflakes on the tree). After a little more cutting a gluing, we ended up with this:
So cute, don't you think?! This project ended up being super-cheap (around $5 in supplies), fairly quick (around 1.5 hours), easy-peasy (cutting, designing and gluing) and FUN (a great bonding experience for Nate and I). Instead of a cheesy-store bought skirt, we now have a fun, bright and PERFECT tree skirt to match our tree. Here is what it looks like under our tree:
If you'd like to make a felt skirt, some additional options to consider:
- Instead of gluing shapes, hand-stitch them with embroidery floss to add interest
- Buy pre-cut felt shapes from your local craft store
- Add ribbon or trimming to the edge
- Use pinking shears to cut the circle to add a different twist
If you have any questions, please post them in the comments :)
Ps. What do you think of the tutorial? Is this something you'd like to see more of in the future?
