Raggy Christmas Trees

Are the kids getting restless? I have a solution. Grab those little bits of fabric stashed in your sewing space and you can all have a wonderful time creating Raggy Christmas Trees! They’re easy, quick to make and offer lots of opportunity for creative memory making!

My Raggy Christmas Tree forest began with a tree kit from my local fabric shop, Pacific Fabrics. It included bits of flannel, rusty stars and wooden spools – enough for six trees. I decided to make them to sell ($5.00) at the one night Craft Bazaar at our church! You may not be able to find a kit, but you can easily assemble your own materials.

If you’d like to read more about my Christmas Crafting for the Bazaar, including my pricing philosophy, click here.

Materials You’ll Need:

• Scraps or fat quarters of flannel or cotton prints and solids
  • I used all flannels, but cottons would work well, too. They just need to have enough body to stay straight out from the tree “trunk” when tied. Ribbon could be fabulous!
• Wooden thread spools
  • If you have real spools available, they would be great. If not, you can purchase spools from a craft supply store.
• Dowels in the correct diameter to fit in your spools
  • I had three sizes of thread spools, so I took them to the hardware store with me. Good thing I did – turns out I needed three different diameters of dowels!
• Stars or something wonderful for the top of the tree
• E-6000 Glue
• Optional: Buttons or bling to add to the “branches”

How to Grow Raggy Trees

1. Determine how tall you would like your trees and cut the dowels to the length you want. This could vary from tree to tree depending on the size of your spools.
2. Using E-6000 or your favorite glue, attach the dowels to the spools and set them aside. Be sure to follow the instructions on your glue as “setting” times vary.
3. Cut strips approximately 3/4″ wide from the fabrics you chose. You can vary the widths or keep them all the same. The length does not matter at this point as you will trim them to the size you need as you go. I chose a variety of red and green flannels, but you could make them super colorful or all one tone.
   
4. If your ‘trunks” are now secure in the spools, it’s time to start tying fabric strips. They are tied in just a single knot (once around) to the trunk. You can add as many “branches” as you like to each tree for a sparse or bushy look. Hubby helped me with this and left the knots on the front of the tree. You may like your knots in back – up to you!
   
5. Once you have as many strips tied on as you’d like, glue a star to the top of the dowel “trunk” of each tree.
6. Trimming time! Using your own creative judgement, trim the “branches” so that they taper from wide on the bottom to narrow on the top of your tree.

   

7. Optional: Using the E-6000 glue, add buttons or bling to the center of your “branches” on top of the knots. I didn’t do that because I only wanted really, really, quick makes for the bazaar, but the picture above looks awesome!

Hurray!! You’ve grown Raggy Christmas Trees! Aren’t they gorgeous?! You can make a lovely raggy forest in your sewing space, on the mantel or gift them to friends who sew and quilt. Just be sure to keep one or two for yourself!

Happy Forest Growing!!