I’ve been working on the tree skirt for our Family Traditions tree for years now. Like, lets see…holy cow. Six years. I just counted. It took a few of those years to get the beading finished in between other projects, then I had it sitting in the Work in Progress drawer for a few years waiting on a backing, then a dry cleaner broke a lot of the beading and it needed to be replaced, and finally. Just when I had it all done save for buttons. The worst of all. Cat pee.
This tree skirt has a voodoo doll out there somewhere. It’s cursed.
On my list of Crafty goals, I thought this was going to be a gimme. Just a little binding to finish. But in trying to recover from the cat pee, which turned into taking off the entire backing and starting over, then soaking the skirt in salt water and vinegar to try to set the color, and soaking again, and soaking again, then finally giving up on it ever being colorfast when you notice that even the beads have turned red, then taking the red beads off and redoing them all, then redoing the backing, redoing the binding, and following through with the buttons that got me into this mess in the first place…..
It’s finished. It took half my year, but it’s finished.
The good news is that my cats are very predictable in where they’re going to act out. They never pee on a made bed, or fabric that is neatly folded. They get seduced by a nest. As long as I only have this skirt available when it’s carefully spread out, I think I’ll be fine. And if *ONE MORE* thing happens to it, I’ll know it’s doomed, throw it in the trash, and cleanse my house with sage.
The buttons are cute, but so not worth all the trouble they caused.
The beading on this is so pretty! (And, it's nice to hear that others have projects that take more than a year–maybe I'll pull out the cross stitch I started 6 years ago 🙂 )
That tree skirt is fantastic. I am glad you were able to get it repaired and ready in time for Christmas. What about putting it on a tree that is elevated and not in the cats reach?