Mini Tree Skirt

Oliver is finally at the age where he's excited about Christmas ahead of time. When he's allowed to watch TV, he only wants to watch Christmas specials on Netflix. And after we shot this year's Christmas card using the pre-lit mini tree (that we bought in October), he insisted we keep it up in the living room. I decorated it with the ornaments I recently made. Christmas has started early this year in our house!

The tree actually fits perfectly between the stairs and the TV and Oliver loves having it front and center where he can admire it easily. The only thing that bothered me was the bottom - plastic legs are so ugly! I went online to see if I could find a cheap mini tree skirt, but the prices were outrageous! I'm sure if I had the mobility to shop around at some big box stores I could have found something, but I'm still restricted to online shopping. So instead I ordered a $5 giant sheet of felt from amazon ($5 felt like the right price for a $12 tree!) that arrived 2 days later.

I measured the base of the tree with a ruler - I needed 12" from the center all the way around, or a 24" diameter. I laid out my felt and then marked it with some of Oliver's colored chalk,the outside borders and the center. I freehanded the circle shape in chalk, it didn't need to be perfect since it was going around a tree.

I cut out the outside circle, then the line towards the middle (so it can wrap) and the center circle. I was going to do buttons with loops to hold it closed, but then I realized it didn't have to lay perfectly flat - the legs are raised a bit. So I took a shortcut and cut slits for the buttons instead - it's not perfectly flat, but around the tree it actually works better!

I liked the plain dark green because it disappeared...  but then I couldn't help myself. I wanted some white felt stars on it. White stars would match the felt ornaments decorating the tree and the big tree skirt for our big tree. On the big tree skirt I actually added the stars myself years ago, modeling it after a really pricey felt tree skirt I loved from Garnet Hill.

Adding the stars was easy, I already had the white felt. I cut out the stars in the same freehand folksy style of the ornaments, pinned them to the skirt where I wanted them, then sewed them on by hand.

I like the tree so much better now with the skirt around the legs. It's really early to have anything for Christmas out... but honestly I can't say that I mind!