Christmas 2011 - Poinsettia Tree Skirt

Nope, the title is not a typo. I meant to type Christmas 2011. Why? Well, as mentioned in a previous post, I don't have tree skirts for either tree (one sits on a snowflake quilt and the other just has fabric wrapped around the base). So, I went to the fabric store the week before Christmas and bought some cream fleece for 70% off in hopes of making a tree skirt before the big day. Of course, that didn't happen and I just barely finished it today. So that means it will have to wait until 2011 to be put on display. But here's a sneak peek. 

This was my inspiration, but I only wanted one row of flowers instead of two, and I didn't want buttons or a "closure" system. With our trees stand we can slip it on before we assemble the tree so no need to have button closures. And, since our tree is such a hodge-podge of ornaments (most are German ornaments from Ryan's mother or that we bought in Germany a few years back) it's very colorful. Thus, I went with a basic cream to keep it from being too busy. 


I originally started by hand-cutting all the flower petals. After wasting some time I got bored, and after some grumbling pondering, I realized, DUH! why don't I just use my Sizzix big-shot? Luckily, I have a fun flower die that worked perfectly. Thank heavens! It was such a time-saver. I was able to cut out 4 layers of fleece at a time and the kids had fun helping me. They even noticed that the flowers looked like poinsettias.

I'm very happy with it, though my now stiff fingers are VERY very grateful that it's all done. I hand stitched each flower together (each flower has 6-7 layers) and then glued it to the edge of the fleece with my trusty hot-glue gun. 


Total cost: 
2 yards of fleece  = $6.40
Time to make: 
1 hour of cutting the skirt and die-cutting all the flowers
about 1 hour to hand-stitch the flowers together
15 minutes to glue them on 
(all these steps were spread across a couple days)