Embellishment

A few years ago I bought a very inexpensive felt Christmas tree skirt.  I added my own embellishments with fabric bears and trees cut from my stash, simply added with fusible web.  Although I had originally planned to blanket stitch by hand around all the figures, my shortage of time instead led to my using a fine point permanent pen to add a long running "stitch" around the edges of the bears and trees.  But it still wasn't very exciting to look at.  This year's Crate and Barrel holiday catalog showed lots of crafty type decorations using felt circles, like these stockings and especially the matching tree skirt.   I immediately thought of adding circles to my tree skirt, but the idea of cutting out all those suckers sapped my energy.  Then, brainstorm, I thought of precut shapes out of felt!  Off to Michael's I went and after a whole store search, I located some sparkly snowflakes that were sticky backed--perfect!  Two packages came home with me.

I scattered them around the skirt and then, to make it more charming, I added buttons:

My mother-in-law had given me tons of buttons when she moved to a smaller unit at the senior living place and I know many of these are old because she never threw anything away. Erica suggested yellow buttons for the trees' stars and that completed the look.  She helped me sew them on, making quick work of the task.

Though we got our tree last Tuesday, it wasn't until Friday night that it was finally decorated and the tree skirt installed.  The white snowflakes really show up well under the tree and I am pleased at last with the embellishment!