These are the steps I took to make the banner and tree of the Advent calendar.  I actually did not mean for the calendar to be so large.  But, by the time I realized how big the finished product would be, it was too late to go back.  The entire banner is approximately 4’x3′.  You can certainly scale it down if you don’t have the wall space for this monstrosity.  Go here and here to see how to make the ornaments.

I got a yard of green felt from Joann’s.  A yard is 3 feet.  The width of the felt is 72″, so I had a lot of green felt.

I folded the piece in half.

I cut a triangle.  Here, my scissors are at their peak performance.

Bam, huge ass tree.

Some time lapsed between the tree cutting and the next step, for it is now night.  I cut out 24 pieces of paper that measured 4″x4″.  The plan was for each ornament to be smaller than 4″x4″.  I laid them out on the tree to make sure there would be enough space for everything.

I trimmed the tree until it resembled a gigantic pile of green poop.

I found these cute snowflake buttons at the store.  They will serve as knobs for the ornament loops.

I used pins to first figure out where I wanted the buttons placed.

Here is the tree after I sewed on the buttons.  I also used green DMC pearl cotton thread to whipstitch the tree.  I wanted a thicker thread so the stitches would stand out, and it also took a lot less time than messing with regular thread.  I was originally going to paint numbers on the calendar using stencils.  But after a few failed practice runs on scraps, I decided that it was too risky, and I would probably screw up.  And then I would be super pissed off and probably tear the tree apart with my bare hands and teeth.

For the tree trunk, I used two entire sheets of brown felt, and whipstitched the sides with brown DMC pearl cotton thread.  I forgot to take a picture, but I sewed pieces of velcro onto both sheets of felt.  It’s hard to explain here, but keep scrolling, and you’ll see why.

These are the pieces of the Virgin Mary.

Here are the pieces of the baby Jesus.

Here are the pieces of Joseph.

I know the stitches on the velcro look like shit.  I hate sewing velcro, the thread always gets caught in the teeth of the velcro.  Anyways, the velcro part won’t be seen anyways, so whatever.  So the plan is to glue the nativity scene onto one sheet of felt.  The other sheet will cover up the scene until December 25th.

I have here a yard of white felt and two yards of a holiday theme cotton fabric.  I cut them down to the size I wanted.

I got two dowels that were 48″ long and 3/4″ round.  My husband helped me trim the dowels and drilled a hole into each end of one of the dowels.  They need to be big enough to thread a ribbon through.

My husband bought me a sewing machine for Mother’s Day, but I haven’t made the time to learn how to use it yet.  He on the other hand, knows how to use a sewing machine, thanks to home ec class back in the day.  He helped me sew the felt and holiday fabric together.  He folded the ends of the banner and sewed across the fold to make a hole to insert the dowels.

I had my husband sew a strip of white felt across the back of the banner.  This will be a pouch to hold the ornaments.  Aha, genius huh?

At this point, I stopped taking pictures because it was really late and I just wanted to hurry and finish the blasted project.  I used hot glue to first glue the tree trunk that had the nativity scene.  Then I hot glued the tree in place.  BUT make sure the bottom of the tree covers up the top of the trunk where the ugly velcro stitches are.  Also leave the bottom of the tree unglued so you have access to the velcro and can do the big reveal on the 25th.

I threaded a red ribbon through the holes in the dowels and knotted the ends.  I also hot glued strips of holiday ribbon across the banner.

Aaaaah!  It is done.