DIY Christmas Tree Skirt

I have been married for over two years and we have never had a Christmas tree, yikes! Now before you go judging us, our first two Christmas's we were students and spent most of our school breaks either in Oregon with my family or Colorado with my husbands. Having a Christmas tree didn't seem like a realistic option for us, especially a real one. This year I really wanted a Christmas tree, even though I will be gone for half of December, and finally gave in and bought a fake one on Black Friday. In preparation for getting our tree I decided I wanted to make a Christmas tree skirt. I had seen a bunch of different ones on Pinterest, but fell in love with a burlap and taffeta one. It took me a really long time to find the original blog that featured the skirt, but I found it and quickly went to work! I love, love, love how it turned out! Unfortunately my Christmas tree is a tad too big for it (it is also too big for my apartment, oh well). For the meantime it will work just fine, but someday when we move I will add a few more layers to it.

Materials: 
Hot glue gun
sewing machine (optional)
old tree skirt or material for base
3 yards of burlap
4 yards of red taffeta

Directions:

1. Cut your burlap and tafetta into two or two and half inch strips. The tafetta is easy because you can make a small cut and then tear the rest of the strip (tafetta and most materials will tear in a straight line). The burlap is a little bit tricker, but not too bad. To cut burlap you pull a thread out of the burlap which will give you a guide for where to cut. Then take your scissors and cut away. Be sure and cut your material the long way.

See how that makes nice straight lines for you?

2. Ruffling your fabric strips. I didn't ruffle my fabric strips before hand, but if I were to do it again I would. To do this take your material and sew two basting stiches along one egde. Then take the two ends of the threads and pull on them until your material is ruffled to your satisfaction. OR you can sew a top stich along one edge of your material gathering it as you go. Either should work. If you don't have a sewing machine or don't feel comfortable ruffling your material, have no fear you can still make this tree skirt!

3. Glueing your fabric onto your base or original tree skirt is by far the most time consuming part of this project. Start at the bottom of your base and glue down your first strip of material, gathering as you go if you need to. If the bottom of your base is really wide you may need to use more than one strip. I used about 8 strips of both the burlap and the tafetta. In total it took me about 3 hours to do the whole skirt, including
cutting the fabric.

I did not pre ruffle my fabric. It was a little difficult with the burlap, but still possible to do!

The top ruffles get a little tricky, but they are hidden by your tree :) 

4. Place under your Christmas tree and enjoy!