BonnieProjects: Christmas Tree Skirt

Monday, December 12, 2011

Christmas Tree Skirt

My fiance's employees went all-out decorating their office this year. He made them promise to wait till after Thanksgiving, and he came back from vacation to discover Christmas had overtaken! They posted a cute photo on facebook of their efforts, but I noticed something was lacking - a Christmas tree skirt! This had to be remedied immediately!

pretty, but it needs a skirt!

I perused the fabric store, looking for ideas. This skirt would need to be hip and fun to mesh with their brand. Velvet? Felt with the company logo sewn on? Quilted? Sequined? There were lots of choices! Finally I decided on a glittery blue satin (approximately their company color). While waiting around for the cutting table to open up, I also found white fur trim. Perfect! There was only 1.5 yards of the blue left on the bolt. I eyeballed the piece and it seemed sufficient, so that's what I got. Also, some quick math determined I would need about 4 yards of the fur trim.

To cut the basic shape of the skirt, I folded the fabric into eighths, like you would to make paper snowflakes. My fabric wasn't cut square, so I measured the shortest radius length - 27 inches. Then I measured 27" from the center to make a rough sketch of where I should cut. Then I cut out the big circle! (Note: I read online that your tree skirt should be approximately the same diameter as your tree. I hope mine is big enough!)

Next I cut the small center circle using a similar technique. To finish up, I cut a slit in the circle so we'll be able to get the skirt around the tree.

Then I hemmed the raw edges to make them look nice and prevent fraying.

To finish it off, I attached the fur trim. Apparently my either my geometry or measuring skills were off, and I was lacking about 12" in fur. Turns out I didn't account for the 2" width of the fur. I cut an extra 2" off the circle, and it was perfect!