I have wanted to make a tree skirt to fit my "artificial tree" (gasp!) for a while now! My mother would be so sad that I have taken on the tradition of an artificial tree. Growing up we ALWAYS had live trees and when I mean "live" I mean they still had roots on the bottom and we planted them in the yard after Christmas. The house did smell amazing! I like to use the Bath and Body Works plug-in scent in fresh balsam to try and enhance my fake tree:) I sure do love my tree and am counting down the days to put her up and dress her in this cozy tree skirt!
This is a NO-SEW tree skirt! Can you believe it! This baby is put together with a hot glue gun! I looked at a few no-sew tutorials on Pinterest and then made mine. I would check Pinterest out before you decide what to do since I am not the best at explaining every detail!
1) The first thing you need is a canvas to glue the strips of fabric to. I went to Sherwin Williams and got their contractor series drop canvas in 5 feet by 5 feet. It was $9.99. I then folded it two times going opposite ways and traced with a pencil two curved lines one to cut the top for the tree trunk and then a big curved line at the bottom so when you cut it it unfolds into a circle. Remember if you have an artificial tree that you don't want the top curve to be very big. That is the part that will be the hole that goes around your tree trunk. You then cut a slit up the side.
2) I used three yards of fabric. One yard each in a different pattern. I used one black pattern and then two patterns in white...
I made a cut with my scissors and then ripped the strips at the cut all the way down into long strips.
3) Here comes the fun part. Turn on a movie or invite some friends over to chat with while you start gluing for a while. I had some friends over who were working on their own projects that kept me company so it went really fast. It took me two hours of just hot gluing. Start at the base and glue a 6 inch strip of glue onto your cut out canvas. Take your strip and pinch the top of your strip of fabric onto the hot glue. You will be pinching the fabric to give it a gathered look. You will get the hang of it. I didn't do heavy gathering just a little so the fabric didn't go on flat. When you do the next row of fabric make sure your fabric overlaps a little with the fabric below so you don't see the canvas come through.
4) If there are any spots because of the way it is gathered that you see the canvas peak through just take a dot of hot glue and make it go flat.
5) OPTIONAL: Pick a ribbon and cut it into four pieces and hot glue two on opposite sides to tie together. Make sure to hot glue them underneath the skirt onto the bottom side. Do the same below with the other two pieces. This is optional because you could just overlap the slit a little when you wrap it around the tree in back. The ribbon ties are going to be on the back side of my tree.
I am loving the way it turned out. The canvas I bought has a good weight to it so I think it will lay nicely around the tree. The best part is that the small hole will fit snug against my skinny tree trunk since it is custom made! I think you could choose so many cute color combos for fabrics to make it your own. It would be fun to take a bunch of random christmas fabrics of reds too. I think next year I might make it reversible and make one on the other side. This was a fun project that turned out to not be as hard as it looked!
