This DIY buffalo check tree collar was made with very basic hardware store supplies and fabric. You can use any fabric you like to make your own tree collar for under $10!
a few years ago we made our own rustic DIY tree collar and we loved the tidy look of it so much that we decided to make another one. This DIY buffalo check tree collar will be on the tree in the living room this year, but we’re be using the wooden one on our tree on our front porch this time again. Tree collars are getting to be so popular now and for good reason: They don’t bunch up under your tree like a tree skirt does, they don’t collect fallen needles and cat fur, and they’re really easy to clean around. Plus they look pretty great, don’t they?
A lot of the tree collars you can find in stores are basic wicker basket-y looking ones or galvanized metal ones – which I love – but I wanted something a little more unique and tailored to the look I was going for with our Christmas decor this time. It’s a bonus that this DIY tree collar also happened to be super affordable! Thanks to Chris for his clever design for the frame! 🙂
What You Will Need
To make your own DIY fabric tree collar, you’ll need:
- Flexible PVC tubing – There are many different things at the hardware store you could use for this, but the corrugation of this tubing makes it really easy to bend it into a perfect circle without any fuss.
- 2 quick connect couplings for the tubing
- 3/8″ Wood Dowels
- A drill
- A hot glue gun
- Fabric of your choice – This is a great chance to use up extra fabric leftover from another project.
We picked up the basic supplies for the frame from our local hardware store for less than $10, but you can also order everything you need for this project from Amazon if that’s easier for you.
How to Make the Frame for the DIY Tree Collar
Start out by making the top and bottom circles out of the tubing for your frame. You want to make one circle that’s a little bit bigger than the other.
Measure around the base of your tree stand to make sure that the smallest circle will fit comfortably around the widest part of your stand, then make another circle a little bigger!
You can cut the tubing with any basic saw or your can use a plumbing pipe cutter like this if you have one.
Use the couplings to connect the two ends of each of your circles.
Next, you need to drill holes for your dowels. Mark off where you need to drill first like this:
Measure under the base of your tree to see how long you need your dowels to be and cut four of them to the right length. You’ll probably want them to be somewhere between 6-10 inches for most trees.
Now drill! 🙂
The final step of assembling the frame is just to put it all together!
Ta-da!
Covering the DIY Buffalo Check Tree Collar Frame in Fabric
The trick to getting your DIY buffalo check tree collar to look the way you want it to is to get the fabric to fit really smoothly around the frame and to keep the pattern as straight as possible. If you pick a fabric without a pattern, or with more of a free-form pattern, then you’re making life a little easier for yourself. 🙂
I worked my way around the frame, gluing a few inches of fabric to the top of tube of frame, then pulling it tight and gluing a few inches to the bottom of the frame directly below.
Every four inches or so, I had to make a little pleat in the fabric that I was gluing to the top to keep things straight because of the two different circumferences of the circles.
It took a lot of hot glue to make this come together and I went through about three big glue sticks between gluing the fabric to the frame, and getting the pleats to hold in place, but I’m happy to report that I managed to walk away with only the tiniest little glue gun burn on one finger. That’s a hot glue miracle!
I didn’t pre-measure my fabric at all for this, I really just kept a pair of scissors close by and trimmed the excess off as I completed the gluing on each section. I would say that a yard of fabric would probably be plenty for this project.
If you’re using a smaller scrap or an oddly-shaped scrap of fabric and you need to use more than one piece, you can easily create a nice, tidy look by just folding over one edge of the fabric and gluing it onto itself before you start gluing your new piece to the frame.
Fully Customized DIY Tree Collar
This was one of those project ideas that I thought would surely go terribly wrong at some point. The materials and the supplies are so simple that I thought I must surely be overlooking some important element in my planning process. It couldn’t really be that easy, could it? But it worked! 🙂
Here’s how it looks on the tree in our living room!
And here it is with a few more decorations on the tree. I’d say it fits right in and it really looks exactly how I had hoped it would.
Time to decorate? Try these DIY Ornaments from The Creek Line House – Dried Allium Christmas Ornaments – Mini Topiary Christmas Tree Ornaments
After these two tree collars that we’ve made now, I’d definitely say that DIY is a great way to go if you’re thinking of trying a tree collar instead of a skirt this year. I love the way this DIY buffalo check tree collar turned out and I’d love to see this concept in another pattern too. Let me know if you try it out with a different fabric by tagging me on Instagram! I’m @Creeklinehouse. 🙂
Have you made the switch to a tree collar or do you still love to use a tree skirt?
MORE IDEAS LIKE THIS
- Christmas Gift-In-A-Jar Ideas
- How to Dry Orange Slices for Christmas
- DIY 12-Minute Modern Farmhouse Wool Wreath
- 5 Reasons Why Your Christmas Decor Doesn’t Look Quite Right
- The Creek Line House Christmas Archives
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.