Craftiness Genes & Christmas Trees

Yes, I said it.  I have craftiness genes.  And I can prove it.  Mama Sass sent along a project she worked on for the Christmas season.  She saw it in a cute flower shop on a recent trip to Billings, and determined that she could make it herself - and in thrifty style, of course!

If you want to duplicate these pretty little trees, you'll need the following:

A wool sweater, felted in your washing machine;

Sewing machine;

Some stiff cardboard;

Three lengths of dowel;

Polyester fiberfill;

Jingle bells or other small ornaments;

Little teeny tree stands (you'll see)!

First, she bought an old wool sweater with some winter charm, and she washed it on the hottest water setting and then dried it the same way to felt the wool.  It's a unique property of wool that causes the fibers to lock together when you introduce hot water and agitation.  It made a tiny little sweater with tightly locked yarn:

Mama Sass cut three nice little trees, making the most of her wintry sweater pattern.

She sewed along only the the top two edges, wrong sides together, using a pretty tight little stitch.

She turned them right side out.  Then using them as a pattern, she cut three tree shapes from stiff cardboard.

She duct-taped the dowels to the stiff cardboard, trimmed the edges, then slipping them up inside the 'pockets' made from the sweater.

Each tree is padded on either side of the cardboard, using polyester fiberfill.

Tiny ornaments are sewn along the edges.  Mama Sass used itty-bitty jingle bells.

This looks to me like Mama Sass softened the candles in existing candle votives, and then just sank the trees' trunks down into the soft wax, waited for it to harden, and ta-da!  tree stands!  (I stand corrected.  She actually set these down in Plaster of Paris.)

I'm going to do a variation on this craft for my mantel,  so in a few days, I'll show you my tree stands.

 

Here they are in all their glory.  I'd bet they'll be a part of her January decor, as well!   They're very wintry, without necessarily being strictly Christmas oriented.  Aren't they pretty?

Thanks so much, Mama Sass, for sharing your pics with me and all my readers.  

Love,

Sass