Monday, December 3, 2012

No Sew Burlap Tree Skirt

This will be mine and Big B's third Christmas together but our first one as a married couple and to say that I'm excited would be a total understatement!  Our first Christmas together I made Big B get his a Christmas tree and since it was his first one he also had to buy ornaments, lights and a tree skirt.

He let me pick out the ornaments and gave me my pick of tree skirts from Home Depot.  I wasn't in love with any of them so I picked out the best of what was available...

Tree Skirt from Home Depot

In all honesty, it isn't that bad but I really wanted something a little more versatile.  In the last year I've seen a bunch of the ruffled tree skirts on some of the blogs I read and even more now that I'm on Pinterest and have in turn fallen in love with them!  My two main inspirations were:

 
I took Big B to Joann Fabrics with me and gave him the choice of either cotton or burlap and he liked the look of the burlap better so we went with it.  I'm sure the fact that it was cheaper had nothing to do with it!  *yeah right*

What You Need:
- 4 1/2 yards of burlap or fabric of your choice
- Hot glue gun and glue sticks
- Scissors
- Tree skirt

Back side of our existing tree skirt
 

 Cut your burlap into 2" strips.  I had never used burlap before so I watched how the woman at Joann's cut it for me and followed her lead.  I tried to take some pictures but they didn't show up very well so I would suggest checking out the following blogs for tutorials:

 
 

Start at the bottom of your tree skirt and work your way up.  Begin with gluing the top right corner of your strip of burlap to your existing tree skirt.  (Sorry I didn't take a picture of that step!)

Next, leave a space and then make a fold in your burlap:


Take your glue gun and place a small dot of glue on the burlap where your fold would overlap if lying flat like so:


Press down the fold and hold for a few seconds and voila! you have a ruffle!


My tree skirt took me about 4 hours to do but I was also watching football and a movie as well as talking to my hubby while I was working.  If I had no distractions I'm sure it would have taken me half that much time!  I loved how mine turned out and now I'm more excited than ever to get our tree and really decorate for Christmas!


I'm still trying to decide whether or not if I want to put ribbon on the ends instead of using the velcro to close it but I'm loving the simplicity!  What do you guys think?