Poisoned Apple Tree Assembly

I feel as though I should be cackling at this point after building my poisoned apple tree. Perhaps after I've added the apples. It doesn't help that I started reading Chris Colfer's The Wishing Spellthis afternoon, which opens with a visit to the incarcerated evil queen from Snow White and the seven dwarves. This project went up pretty easy. I had done paper trees before, years ago. It was a--I'm going to do with 'pleasant'--surprise to realize that those are skills that come right back. I first took the length of brown fabric and folded over a length of it on the shorter side. I sewed a quick hem about five inches down--I wanted long enough down that moving the soaker hose around wouldn't be a problem. Took a length of some soaker hose I had leftover from the diy petticoat project last year and slid it through the hem. Took some duct tape and secured it into a ring. I took some doubled up yarn and threaded it through the fabric, underneath the soaker hose and made a loop for the 'trunk' to hang from at 4 opposite spots on the ring.

Once I had a rough idea of the diameter of the trunk, I put up hooks on the ceiling and let them stand for a bit. The trunk was then secured by the loops on the hooks. Went very quickly, and the fabric and soaker hose weren't very heavy, so it went up easily.

I cut the fabric just as it touched the ground. Ideally, I would leave some and make twisting roots. But we have cats, and they would take laying fabric as an invitation to...yeah. So aesthetic ceded to practicality. Made it lighter on the hooks, and easier to vacuum/carpet clean--which I still need to do...at some point.

Next I mapped out the leaves. I took a bunch of hooks and the piece of (crocheted chain) yarn I was to use to hold up the 'branches' and made a slightly larger circle around the trunk.

I slid all of the branches onto the yarn, then slid a couple between each hook point. Here it is half done:

And all the way around the tree

The leaves are a little sparse, so I'll work on making some to go in another layer behind the front one, but for the most part, I'm okay with how it turned out. And as soon as the apples come, I'll hang them up (with a skull and bones on them first).