Gathered Tree Skirt!

I needed a tree skirt for our Christmas Tree.
I had some old curtains that were hanging in the
 boys room when we moved in.
They wanted black curtains, so I swapped them
and had this khaki stuff sitting around.
I cut them into triangles.
I didn't measure, none of them are the same size...they look like a mess.
I sewed them together so all the small ends were at the top and the wide ends were at the bottom.
This will make my tree skirt really full!

Then, I sewed a 2 1/2 inch casing at the top edge...

and sewed a line down the casing...so essentially there are 2 casings.

 I used a bodkin and some 550 cord.

 Thread the cord through the top casing, then loop it back through the bottom casing.

 It will have a loop like this on one end...


 And tie it off on the other end.

 Now get some more cord.
Go in the looped end.

all the way through one casing, loop it on the "tied" end,
then back through the other casing.
Tie it off on that end.


 So you have loops and ties on both ends.
When you pull the tied ends, the loops will tighten
 and make the fabric gather perfectly!

 Awesome right?
You can get a really tight gather on this too.

 Now you can tie it around the base of the tree.
And no worries if you get a bigger tree...the skirt will still fit it!

I might add a big ruffle on it for next year.
Who knows.  For now, it was just what we needed!

And you can't even tell I sewed all those weird shaped triangles together at the beginning!
--admit it, you forgot that too!