Ribbon Christmas Tree Shirt

In this household a new holiday means a new shirt for the Little Miss!  It only took me halfway to Christmas to make it!  But once I sat down and got started it went really fast, like two hours tops. 

This is what I came up with (and a matching bow, or course):

It looks super cute on to, if you can get your model to hold still . . .

 

{Materials}

Shirt (ours is a 3T)
Ribbon (I used about six different color/styles.  Some of the ribbon I had on hand by the spool, some I bought at Wal-Mart by the yard.  I didn’t use more than a yard of any, more like 1/2 a yard of most.)
Sewing machine (optional, would be just as easy to sew by hand.)
Needle and Thread
Pins
Heat n’ Bond or double sided fusible interfacing
Iron
Scissors

 

{To Make}

To start I collected my ribbon and laid it out to get an idea of what would look best. 

I started with the bottom of the tree, cut an 18 inch piece of my ribbon. 

Ruffled the ribbon using my sewing machine, set tension as high as it will go and stich length as long as it will go. 

Cut my next piece of ribbon about 1/2 an inch shorter, 17 1/2 inches.  Ruffled.  Cut the next piece 1/2 an inch shorter, 17 inches.  Ruffled.  Continue until you have cut and ruffled all your pieces.  I ended up with nine layers. 

I laid my ribbon out once more on my shirt to make sure I had enough ribbon layers to make a tall enough tree.

Trace a triangle/tree onto paper side of Heat n’ Bond.  My triangle/tree had a six inch base and seven inch sides.

Pin layers onto Heat n’ Bond.  Follow the instructions on the back of the Heat n’ Bond package.  Follow these very carefully.  Iron the back/paper side.  Do not remove paper side until you have cut out your shape.  Otherwise it will be a disaster and your shape template with be gone.  But if you do mess up, you are smart, just use your noggin you can figure it out!

 

Remove pins, cut out tree, remove paper.  Pin tree onto shirt, iron tree onto shirt.  To be safe I turned the shirt over and ironed the back, instead of the front where the ribbon was.  Then turned it over and ironed the front, but placed a towel over the tree.  I was worried about the ribbon melting to my iron.  Irrational fear?  I say, better safe than sorry!

Instead of sewing around the edges and across the layers with my sewing machine, I did some sewing by hand.  I didn’t want my ruffles to get all smooshed down.  I fanned out the sides of the tree a little so it didn’t look so much like a straight triangle.  I just put a small tack stitch in each ribbon then sewed across the ruffle about a 1/2 inch by hand. 

Last step is to add a tree trunk.  I used a piece of brown ribbon, cut it about 3 inches, folded it in half, tucked the top unfolded edge up under the tree and hand sewed it down with tiny tiny stiches. 

Last but not least I added a bow on top of the tree.  Just a simple four loop bow, like you would make for a girls hair bow. 

This morning when we finished doing the Little Miss’ hair I decided that no bow we had would do, so I just HAD to make new one to match her cute new shirt!

 

{Some tutorials that might help}

I kind of followed this tutorial where she made a ruffled candy corn shirt.

Making ruffles with your sewing machine.

 

I’m linking my festive shirt up to these holly jolly parties this week!

Plus a few more: