Christmas Project -- **Ruffled Trees Tutorial**

I have had a few requests for a tutorial for the Ruffle Tree I did in my Living Room.

So the other day I made a little Ruffle Tree forest!!

And along the way I stumbled across a few tips, I thought I could share with you:

Ruffle Trees:

Supplies:

Fabric -- Depends on what size cone you use and how ruffly you want your tree to be. For a large cone, a 120" long by 2" wide strip of fabric makes a pretty ruffly tree. For a very ruffly tree you would need a 150" long strip. You can use a fat quarter if you want, just sew the strips together to form one, continuous ribbon on fabric.

A Syrofoam cone or a sheet of cardstock.

Hot Glue Gun

Finial for the top (optional - I found mine at Hobby Lobby)

Wood bases for bottoms of trees. (also found at Hobby Lobby)

Paint (optional, for bases and finials). For a beachy look, leave unfinished.

*** Styrofoam is expensive. You can use a sheet of scrapbook paper or cardstock instead. Simply roll the paper up so that one end come to a point. Then I stapled that edge and hot glued the rest of the edge down. Then I traced the bottom of the cone on another sheet of cardstock. I would recommend using cardboard on the bottom because it is sturdier. The last thing is to hot glue the base to the cone.

Here's what I did:

Cut out fabric strip. It should be 2 inches wide and the length depends on the size of the cone. One way to figure this out is to take a piece of string and wrap it around the cone, every 2 inches from top to bottom. Then double that total for a slightly ruffled tree. Or triple the length of the measurement for a very ruffly tree.

You not have a long enough piece of fabric, in that case sew the pieces of fabric together so it makes one, continuous strip.

Use you biggest setting on your sewing maching and sew a line down the center of the fabric strip.

Gather up the material.

Then hot glue one of the edges of the strip to the bottom of the cone, then wrap the fabric along the cone, overlapping each layer until the entire cone is covered. If you are using a styrofoam cone, put pins in the cone to hold the fabric in place as you wrap. If you are using a paper cone, hot glue the bottom edge to the paper and wrap the ruffles along the cone until you reach the top.

Once the entire cone is covered with fabric, glue the end of the fabric strip to the top of the cone, the same as you did on the bottom.

Then hot glue the layers of fabric to the styrofoam of paper. If you use a styrofoam cone, hot glue the fabric at each place that you pinned earlier.

Experiment with the wood bases that you purchased. Hot glue different bases together so all of the bases are different heights.

Then paint the bases and the finials/wood balls.

Once the paint is dried, hot glue the finials to the top of each ruffle tree. Do the same thing with the bases.

Now you have a Ruffly Tree.

I love that you can use whatever fabric that you want. I used blue, which matched my decor and I love that it looks Christmas-y, but also fits my home.