[ t r e e s k i r t : d i y ]

Materials:


First, I attempted to make a circle out of my not-even-square-yet piece of fabric. I folded one edge over to the adjacent one to form a triangle (as if trying to make a square piece of paper for origami or something) and hacked off the rest. I'll make a scarf out of that later.

I folded my square in half and then in half again to make a smaller square and attempted to round the edge, thereby making a nice big circle. It worked passably, as you can see in the picture below.

Then, I used some cookie cutters to do a couple of different sizes of stars on white fleece. In the picture below, I was comparing their sizes with the size of the skirt and the rick-rack. I decided to use the tiny six-pointed star.


The preliminary circle of red fleece with four sizes of stars (and a package of rick-rack).

I made a template of the small cookie cutter on notebook paper, which I then traced onto the fleece with a hot pink permanent marker. Man, I love this marker. It worked better than the pencil, by the way, which I tried first. I estimated that I'd use somewhere in the neighbourhood of 24 stars, so I made a few extra in case some got fouled up.


Lots of pretty little stars traced onto white fleece! My cookie cutter saved the day here.

Then, I watched French Kiss while I cut out those darned little stars. I only got to the part where Kate's at the Canadian Embassy by the time I was finished. I arranged them on the skirt and found that I didn't need as many as I'd made. I toyed with the idea of putting some around the (soon-to-be-cut) center hole, but decided against it. I was shooting for "simple" and "tasteful" and decided it would be better to go under rather than overboard. Sidenote: why the Hell isn't "underboard" a term? It should be. Use it tomorrow.

Once I liked the way things were looking, I took out my trusty Unique Stitch (the gal at the fabric store said this is the only one that doesn't get brittle after drying) and attached the rick-rack. I worked about a foot at a time and maintained a fairly okay circle without much guidance (remember, the skirt was sort of like a rounded square at this point).

Then, I scooted my way around the skirt applying the stars. I was careful to get glue to the tips of all the points, so (with luck) they won't pull up. I didn't measure anything in this project, and I forced myself not to go all crazy-perfectionist-like about the circle. While that may be obvious when viewing the aerial shot, on a tree no one will be the wiser. See, it'll be all gathered and there'll be presents on it. I'm not worried.


Detail of the stars and the rick-rack.

I purposefully glued the rick-rack in a better circle than the skirt actually was, and after it dried I trimmed the excess to create an inch-ish border beneath the white squiggles. I hacked a straight line up one side into the center and then free-hand-cut a small circle which will fit around the base of my Christmas tree.


The finished skirt. It's not a perfect circle, but it looks great under the tree.

Total time spent: approximately three hours
US Dollars spent: approximately 21

Please note: Unless otherwise noted, all of these instructions, photographs, and ideas are mine. Please give me credit (and send me pictures!) if you work off of these designs. The sale of any items based on these designs is prohibited.


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