Advent Christmas Tree

It may not look too exciting at the moment, but this is something I've been wanting to make for a few years and just never got round to. And come December 24th it will look beautiful - because it's an Advent Calendar. Very much inspired by this beautiful tree, here.

Initially my plan was to make one with a wide flat base like the image above. But after recently seeing the lovely, mini Christmas tree made by Rainbow Hare for 'Ho, ho, ho and on we sew', in which she ingeniously used coins in a bottle top to weight a 'trunk' for her tree, I decided to scale the idea up and used stones in a bottle to create a sufficiently weighted trunk.

I did put the lid on securely before sewing it up!

I created a very simple sleeve for the bottle.

Zigzagged a base to it, and sewed up the top, with the bottle enclosed.

The top of the tree is just a simple cone, stuffed (with lumpy old cushion filling - which did make for a slightly lumpy tree, I like to think of it as having plenty of character!) and with enough slack at the bottom to tuck up and hand sew securely to my 'trunk'. I made sure the trunk went a good way up into the cone of the tree to try and avoid that tall, tapering cone toppling over too easily. And then there are 24 gold/silver 'shank' buttons sewn on randomly, so we can hang a different decoration each day in December.

I think it has a slightly quirky, gnomish feel to it! Anyway, if I'd made it a few years ago I'm sure I would have then gone on to create 24 beautiful, wool decorations. But as it is, Venetia and Maria are now old enough to very much enjoy making their own decorations for it. So that's the plan. They've come up with a list of 24 different possibilities - some of their later ideas came after having a joint browse through ideas on Pinterest, so may be a little ambitious! I'm sure I'll be called on to help them but I'm hoping all the creativity comes from them. They've got almost a month to work on it so we'll see how they get on, but I am particularly looking forward to their 'nibbled gingerbread man'!

And Maria has made a start already - she brought me a 'star' she'd drawn on a scrap of wool for me to cut out for her:

And then I helped her sew a short length of embroidery thread onto it and we knotted it into a loop so it can hang from one of those buttons.

Watch this space to see how it develops!

Sally.