Stuffed Christmas Tree Tabletop Size For MIL

We bought a star and painted it and I sewed tinsel into it. I went three strands of sewing with knotted invisible sewing and I was like bro I can't take it anymore and realized I didn't have to sew strand by strand. I could just cut the tinsel from the top in strips that were one piece and sew that into the tree.

Star was painted by husband. Two coats of some kind of gold. He was very specific about the color. There were two sizes of star and he said the smaller one would be right and I said this bigger one would be right, but it came in packs with both sizes anyway so it didn't matter. I used a wedding name card holder leftover to crochet the crown of the tree around, and then have something to glue the double sides of the stars to at the top of the tree. Pretty genius use of leftover wedding table place card holders and this is my second or third time using them. Definitely don't regret that purchase at all.

Finished product! I think it was like two weeks and it was uncoooomfortable. 

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Otherisde. Almooooost.

I ended up making way more chevron strips than originally I thought I would because it made it look so real tree like to have the irregular branches even though it would take longer.

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Ft. my kindle and....either bourbon or single malt....looks like bourbon??

It was really kind of interesting; the more I did, the more I had to remove the cardboard spine. I hardly had any cardboard in at the end, just to keep it upright and not floppy and over-stuffed.

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I didn't take any early pictures that I could find so it's strips of chevron with a built in bobble stitch. Made them seamless and it was surprisingly hard to figure out where the colors wouldn't overlap too much. I aimed for no more than three dots of the same color visible on all sides and it was pretty tricky since I could only do maybe 8 bobbles at a time and they were irregular branches, not a regularly segmented circular wrap.

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Rush job for mother in law. Christmas tree. This was actually crocheted.

Bought a new stitch book while I was at mother in laws for Thanksgiving.

Grumblebeeson and GrumbleGrandson and Queen Chubbee

This is not the finished picture, it is so dang cute I wanted it to be the thumbnail LOL

The antennae! Held by happy husband. You can just see his mustache lol.

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I mad a little pollen/whatever flag on the last two legs inspired by the hair on actual white-tailed bumblebee legs. It would look way too clunky to do on all three pairs, and I actually made the front pair a little skinnier to add a bit of delicate design. I also found out too late that I may have placed the first pair too much towards the butt and just barely crowded the second and third pair into the stomach.

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 Aww yiss. The effects of properly aligned legs.

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And look at that little grey and white boo-tay.

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And now the antennae!

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 First pair of legs! Doesn't he look like a fond little angry idiot.

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Then the wings! I crocheted two colors in one magic circle, then folded/triangle folded for one wing. 

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I tried hard to pay attention to the tapering black/grey/white of the tail. It didn't work out exactly how I thought but I think how slim the grey is actually kin of makes it work better. I used short rows to go back and forth and create the ball-curve. I remember when I first was trying to use short rows I was like damn this is frustrating but now they are so vital to making 3-D or stuffed animal type projects.

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And then after medium deliberation on how exactly to get it to look grumpy, I did the grumble mouth! 

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The grumblebee's basic body!

I'm not actually when I started this. This first picture I took was....Feb 11th?

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And the grumblegrandson!

I sacrificed artistic integrity of the limbs and usual pipe cleaners for stub-stub legs as it's for toddlers and I didn't want an unfortunate thing to happen.

It was hard to decide what color to do the eyebrows and mouth since the face is not all one color.

The lesson I've learned is that if you decrease each row you will get a flat circle and not a sphere. I just hate stopping a rhythm.

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Grumblebee needs a wife 

Wings!

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We decided to do pink instead of black/yellow just to be funny but now she really doesn't look like a bee....looks like a fat strawberry peppero or something

Stupid little fond thing

Make a bee family