December 9, 2009

Ripped Strip Christmas Trees

I have a very talented cousin (in-law) who hosted a craft night last week. We all came home with three cute Christmas trees made from ripped strips of Christmas fabric. She gave me permission to post the instructions and pictures of our trees. Thanks again, Cami! We had a lot of fun.

We used a cross section of real wood, drilled and fitted with a painted wooden dowel. Start each tree a few inches up from the bottom and tie a strip to the dowel. Hot glue in place. Tie the rest of your strips above the hot glued strip, starting with the 15 inch strips and working up to the 7 inch strips. Turn the knots and push strips down as you go so the knots are not all on one side and they are nice and compact. Only hot glue the first strip,the rest can just be tied on the tree (I double knotted) without glue. Allow 3 inches of dowel or so at the top of your tree to hot glue the star. Trim any strips or stray threads with scissors that you don't like, and viola! Cute Christmas trees are done!

Here is what you need:

6 fabrics, 1/2 yard each (each fabric will be about 18"x42")
16", 20", and 26" dowels
3 pieces of wood with hole for dowel or other kind of base
3 stars or toppers
hot glue gun
scissors

Cut each fabric into 18x15, 18x12, 18x9, and 18x7 inch pieces.
Clip up an inch into fabric every inch along 18" sides. Tear fabric into strips with hands.

Small Tree- 16 inch dowel (bottom to top):
3- 15 inch pieces of each fabric (3 strips x 6 fabrics = 18 strips total)
4- 12 inch pieces of each fabric
4- 9 inch pieces of each fabric
2- 7 inch pieces of each fabric

Medium Tree- 20 inch dowel:
6- 15 inch pieces of each fabric
6- 12 inch pieces of each fabric
4- 9 inch pieces of each fabric
3- 7 inch pieces of each fabric

Large Tree- 26 inch dowel:
9- 15 inch pieces of each fabric
8- 12 inch pieces of each fabric
8- 9 inch pieces of each fabric
4- 7 inch pieces of each fabric

Total for all three trees:
18- 15 inch pieces of EACH fabric
18- 12 inch pieces of EACH fabric
16- 9 inch pieces of EACH fabric
9- 7 inch pieces of EACH fabric

FYI: I had extra strips left over, so this is just a basic guideline. The amount of strips on your tree depends on how tightly compacted you can get them.

Leave a comment if you have questions!

3 comments:

The Allgaiers said...

Very nice. I just finished doing my own that were very similar. I didn't have as detailed instructions though so that must have been nice. I just had 30 strips of each size. I used three types of fabric so I had 10 per color to make up the 30. I just had to kind of guess and eyeball how many of each size to put on each tree. Your's look great!

Heather said...

ohhhh I love this. I am totally going to do it - I need to get some more Christmas decor- I am sure someday I will have a house - I hope. where did you guys find the wood base and star??

Brittney said...

The wood base is just a piece of branch cut against the grain, so it makes a wood circle. The star was bought at Michaels.

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