Christmas crafting

Oh, Pinterest. I don't think you realize how incredibly helpful/addicting you really are :)

A couple months back, I stumbled across an absolutely adorable picture of a linen and burlap Christmas tree skirt that a girl made. I found it on Pinterest, of course, with a blog including instructions and all. Well, during my two days off this weekend, I decided to dive in and give it a shot! And now that it's complete, I'm going to attempt my first "instructional blog"... hopefully it's not too confusing and you can follow along!

You will need:

one old Christmas tree skirt

rotary board and cutter

scissors

long sewing pins to pin the burlap

about 4 yards of fabric (2 of each fabric you use)

glue gun and glue sticks (lots of them!)

First, you are going to cut lots and lots and lots of strips of each fabric. The length of each strip doesn't matter, but the width does. It's actually easier to manage shorter strips, so I recommend cutting them to about 3 or 4 feet in length each. Also, keep the fabric folded and use the rotary board and cutter on the folded fabric. I learned from experience -- it's much easier to cut lots of layers instead of one at a time. I cut mine to 3 inches wide, but 4 inches would be fine, too. I wouldn't cut any less than 3 inches, because you'll need enough to overlap once you start gluing. 

My other fabric was burlap (thanks to Amy for having leftovers from her wedding!), and it was much easier to just use scissors on the burlap instead of the cutter. But, same thing here. Cut to the same width as the previous fabric.

Here's all the cut fabric. You'll need more than you think. This is what I started with and ended up having to cut two more piles halfway through!

To start, use hot glue and simply start folding the fabric back on itself as you glue. 

Here's what it will look like once the first layer is done.

Then, after each layer, glue the second layer a few inches above so that it overlaps the previous layer a little bit. If using burlap, it's easiest to pin the layer and then go back and glue -- because guess what, hot glue burns your fingers as it goes through the holes in the fabric. Also, please excuse my shopping list on my hand. Guess what I was shopping for?!

Here's layer number two pinned above layer number one. Keep going! It's going to get easier the more you do. 

Once each layer is glued, pinned and glued, pinned and glued, etc, you can use some twine and make a tie at the opening to secure it around the base of the tree once it's up.

And there you go! A finished burlap and linen-like (because it's much cheaper haha) Christmas tree skirt!!!! 

I AM SO PROUD :)