Christmas Tree Number Two: Woodland Forest Theme

The second tree at our house is sort of a "woodland forest" theme.  It all started with a beautiful wire and glass bead garland I found in a catalog several years ago, pictured as part of a tablescape.  I bought a bunch of them for this Christmas tree, and I think it looks like glittering ice and snow.  Then a snowflake ornament thing started, and then I bought a couple of feathered bird ornaments, which blossomed into a full-blown bird ornament obsession.  I looked at hundreds of tree toppers before choosing this blown glass star topper from Christopher Radko, but I didn't like the way it was made to attach to the tree so Bernie made some custom welding modifications for me, and my sparkly sprays at the top of the tree cover up the wire spiral that secures the star to the tree.

New to the tree this year are the true red poinsettia sprays and the red cranberry sprays.  I had sort of burgundy poinsettias on this tree in previous years and I couldn't stand them another year.  Now that I have more red on this tree, it works with the first Christmas tree skirt I ever made back when Lars was a baby and I was sewing on a Husqvarna Viking Rose sewing machine. 

As you can see, the concept is really similar to the subsequent skirt I made for the kids' tree, but I was much more limited on the other machine when it came to built-in decorative stitches to embellish the patchwork seams.  There's no hand embroidery or beadwork on this skirt, just readymade gold piping trim and machine embroidered poinsettias on every other skirt section.  If you look carefully, you can tell that I had to do some gathering around the center hole at the middle of this first tree skirt, too, because I made the pie slice pattern too wide on the skinny side and I didn't end up with a flat circle when I sewed all the pieces together.  Live and learn!

That's it for today; back to work for me!  I'll show you Bernie's special Christmas tree in a few days.  Happy Advent!