Christmas Cheer #6: Homemade Tree Skirt

It took us a long time to get our tree up, and since it was our first tree ever, we didn't have a skirt for it. I got some inspiration from Pinterest (Follow Me!), as usual, and then tried to figure out how it would best work for me.

The two tutorials I looked at (HGTV's here and MyCrazyLife's here) were pretty much the same, both for a no sew ruffled tree skirt. I knew that any sort of ruffles would not only repel Cory, but attract the kittens. I have enough trouble keeping the critters away from the tree, so I opted for a simpler option.

We went to JoAnn's and found the most amazing burlap!

We loved it because it looks like it has Santa Keys all over it! For those of you who don't know the story of the Santa key, here's a brief explanation: If you don't have a fireplace, Santa has no way to get into your house unless he has a Santa Key. You take an old key with ribbons around it and hang it on the door so Santa can use the key to get into the house to deliver his presents. 

Since we don't have a fireplace, I thought this would be perfect!

We got 2 yards of fabric, which cost about $12.00. Sweet. I cut a 48"x48" square out of the fabric, and saved the rest for later:

Next, I folded it into quarters like the tutorials told me to, then folded the smaller square into a triangle.

I flipped it over so I could cut more comfortably, and cut the top corner off to make a circular-ish shaped skirt. Now, before I did this, I practiced on paper, and it was REALLY hard for me to get a perfect circle. Since I couldn't even do it would computer paper, and I only had a certain amount of fabric, I decided not to go for the perfect circular shape, but to try for a scalloped edge instead.

Next, I cut the middle. Most tree skirts obviously have a circular center, but I wanted to see if I could make it work with a star-shaped center. I might go back and edit this next year because it honestly was a little annoying to try and put around the tree, but it looks really cool on the ground. I just cut a V shape at the bottom of the triangle:

and Viola! Skirt!

I did spend a little time rounding out my scallops a little more and making them more symmetrical. It's not perfect, but it was good enough for me. All that was left was to cut a slit in one side so it could be wrapped around the tree. Unfortunately, we have a GIANT tree stand (seriously...it's huge), and the skirt barely covered it:

I didn't like how it looked at all, so I ended up putting the skirt completely under the tree and tree stand, and then wrapping the extra fabric around the tree stand itself. It looked SO much better!

Before:

After:

The edges did fray a little bit, but that could be easily fixed by using fray-blocking glue. It didn't look too bad with the burlap, though- it kind of fit the look.