Burlap Christmas Tree Skirt

My very sweet 17 year old daughter saw a ruffled tree skirt at a friend's house and decided that she had to make me one for a Christmas gift this week. A little background on this first. My daughter was a reluctant participant in sewing in 4-H for 6 long years! She is not very detail oriented, so it was a struggle for both of us to get projects done right for the fair each year. She was more than happy to be finished with that project, and hasn't had an interest in sewing since.

Well, this project was quite the project. She found all the material herself, and even tried to find ruffles she could sew onto this skirt all over town. When she came up with a dead end on ruffles (she knew she couldn't make her own ruffles), she found bias tape instead! I personally think that she's a genius! I've seen these ruffled skirts and love them, but this actually makes my skirt special!

Mr. Right even got involved and tried to print the lettering out on the computer, but couldn't figure it out. On Tuesday night, while I was working at a home party, she sewed like crazy while the boys tried to figure the computer out. My daughter finally decided to have her boyfriend do the printing for her. He did a fabulous job of printing the "S" and established date on the tree skirt free hand! Beautiful work on both of their parts!

When she pulled out the sewing machine, they couldn't find the cord, so Mr. Right made a new one from some cords laying around! I'm pretty impressed that she thought to trace my other tree skirt to make it. I know I've contemplated how to make a perfect circle for a skirt!

So here's a glimpse of it under my tree. It's off the ground, because I tried something different this year, by putting my tree in an old washtub. I have to say, the burlap skirt is much more beautiful! What do you think? I can't begin to tell you how proud I am of my girl that even though she's not a fan of sewing, she was able to pull this off all by herself for a very special gift that I will truly treasure! It gives me hope that I may have made the right decision to teach my kids homemaking skills.

Comments

DIY Pig Feeder

This is our second year of raising pigs for the fair. We've had some bumps along the way, one of them was our homemade feeder of last year. I tend to have ideas, and then Mr. Right gets the pleasure of trying to execute my ideas. Most of the time it works out, but last year, our feeder was a fail. This year, we need a feeder that can go a long period of time, since our pigs are not on our property where we live. Our neighbor made a complaint about the smell of the pigs last year to our landlord, so the landlord told us no more pigs. (Keep in mind, there are only 2 pigs on 6 acres and they are only here for 5 months and then go to the 4-H fair and livestock auction) Thankfully, another neighbor graciously allowed us to pen up a corner of her horse pen, to put our pigs in. This year, I wanted to be sure that Mr. Right did a quality version of the pig feeder that would make it through the entire five months, and hopefully...

Local Harvest

I am so surprised at the amount of people who don't take advantage of local farmers and produce! We heard about a place called "Tomato Toms" and just had to check it out. (Especially since it seems nearly impossible to grow tomatoes in our town. I think it's something about the elevation) We took a Sunday afternoon to drive to explore local produce and find Tomato Tom. This drive, I thought for sure that no one could be possibly growing anything on such dry land (see the background to the first picture, below). Then we drove up a scary driveway and look what we found: Tomato Toms was a fantastic sizable garden of u-pick heaven! We picked 60 pounds of tomatoes in 10 minutes. Then took about twenty more minutes to figure out just what onions and peppers we needed to go with our tomatoes. The tomatoes weren't store perfect, as in no blemishes or anything, but they were beautiful and tasted wonderful off the vine! I don't normally ...

Burlap and Ticking

I found a queen size bed ruffle with a ticking ruffle on it. Immediately, I picked it up (for only $1!) at our local thrift store. I knew that I would combine it with my find of burlap bags. ( I picked up 200 of them for only $10! Yes, that's right, they were only $.05 each! I overindulged in them, and could take no less than 200 because of the price.) One of the problems with my new bags is that they are a little smaller than the printed ones that I have. I personally like really long table runners because I have a really big table, but I decided to get over my own feelings and make this runner as long as I could (the ruffle really helped, too). So here is the runner. I think the ticking and the burlap really look great together. I know how to make ruffles and have ticking, but for $1 I thought that this really was worth using from a different source! You could have it in the middle of a big table like above, or you co...

Prairie Scraps

Search This Blog