Time to Trim Tree? Just Skirt the Issue
It’s the little detail--and usually the last one--that always spoils the effect and makes you feel like a prize idiot.
Say you’ve got a big evening ahead, one that obliges you to trot out The Suit. It’s beautiful. The shirt is perfectly starched and pressed, and the shoes are polished to a high gloss. You reach for the tie, the $75 imported silk number. Muted, tasteful, just right.
And streaked with encrusted marinara sauce.
Now you remember: that little disaster last month at Trattoria Malatesta. But it’s too late. You’re forced to settle for the birthday tie with the little billiard balls all over it, and the harmonious coordination of your ensemble is ruined. You look like Ronald McDonald in an Armani.
To make amends, you plan a big meal for next weekend. You cook as if possessed: fantastically intricate dishes requiring days of effort. And they all work. The table could be the opening scene from “Norman Rockwell Meets Escoffier.”
You fetch the wine, a dusty, impossibly expensive bottle you’ve been hoarding since the Eisenhower Administration. You decant and sip.
And your entire face puckers into the shape of a dried apricot. The vinegar is powerful enough to pour into an F-14. You settle for light beer. And the blissful marriage of food and wine goes south for a quickie divorce.
Now that you’ve got the idea, let’s discuss the Christmas tree skirt. You probably know it as “that old white sheet in the garage rafters between the string of lights and the case of Pennzoil.” That’s because you probably spend about 45 seconds each year thinking about this item.
You may prowl every Christmas boutique, ornament shop and U-Cut-M tree farm from Fresno to Cabo San Lucas in an effort to produce the perfect combination of foliage, decoration and lighting--the better to make the Joneses’ puny Yule twig look even more anemic--but once the thing is potted, spotted and gloriously trimmed, you wrap the base of it in the equivalent of a castoff from a toga party.
Nancy Kelly got pretty sick of this omission a few years ago and decided to put her skills as a seamstress to work. She obtained several yards of satin, velveteen, brocade, lace and other lavish materials and started stitching up fluffy, symmetrical skirts that stand up to even the gaudiest tree.
Kelly made the tree skirts as gifts for friends and family and gave them at weddings and housewarmings as well as for Christmas. She began to realize, she said, that she was onto something when she “saw people’s faces light up when they thought about the possibilities.”
Some of those thoughts, she said, turned to using the skirt not merely as camouflage for the tree stand, but as a true decorator item. Today, Kelly’s customers are likely to have fairly specific ideas about the types and colors of fabrics that they want to see used in the skirt. Some request that the skirt harmonize with the tree itself, and its decorations, while others ask that it blend with the color scheme of the room that surrounds it.
Others want the skirt to reflect a particular theme. Kelly said her brother, a pilot, suggested that she sew a tree skirt with tiny appliques of airplanes.
Laid flat, the skirts look a bit like plush, lacy doughnuts (they’re filled with quilt batting). Fitting them around the base of the tree is no problem, however: All are fitted with a Velcro-lined seam that can be pulled apart and reattached once the skirt is around the trunk of the tree.
The standard size skirt, said Kelly, is 54 inches in diameter and is reversible. These generally sell for $125. Larger skirts, or skirts that require particularly expensive fabric, accessories or needlework start at $150.
However, said Kelly, they can be sewn to any size, from carpet-like skirts that girdle huge institutional-size trees, to others not much larger than small throw pillows that surround the base of tabletop-size trees.
“These are the kinds of things that become part of a family’s heritage,” Kelly said. “You can pass them along to your children. I wanted to make something that people will remember.”
She also thinks she’ll be able to fashion a business out of them. Since devoting herself full-time to producing tree skirts, she has formed a business, called Griffin Dell, in Santa Ana. Eventually, she said, she wants to sell not only the skirts, but also other ornaments and seasonal decorative items.
Buying one of Kelly’s tree skirts poses a dilemma. Having seen a few examples of them myself, I admit that I’m torn: Do I buy one of her flashiest models and run the risk of making the tree itself look drab--while also risking the ignition of a frenzy of tree-ornament buying to bring the rest of the tree up to snuff--or do I stick with the old sheet and hope it won’t fall into tatters if I run it through the washing machine?
Or do I just wrap the trunk with the Armani?
