Woven Christmas Tree Ornament

I just finished a woven Christmas tree ornament, made completely from yarn. I'm really proud of it because it took a heck of a lot of effort to figure out how to do it! 

I was inspired by this cool Christmas tree weaving project by Kathy of AngelNik Designs: 

Kathy's project uses a paper plate to weave a fun Christmas tree using yarn scraps. It's a wonderful project for young children. You can see examples made by her 1st graders on her site. 

I was determined to figure out a way to remove the tree from the paper plate loom (without having the tree fall apart, of course) so that I could hang it on the Christmas tree. It took a bit of trial and error, but mission accomplished! 

I started by following Kathy's detailed directions to create a loom and weave the tree. That brought me to here:

I used a piece of brown yarn to weave six rows across just the center four green warp yarns, then tied it off. 

I turned over the plate and snipped the warp yarns. 

I carefully removed the top part of the tree from the paper plate loom. The part Kathy used as a hanger came off....

... so I cut a small piece and tied the top securely. 

The ends of that piece became the hanger when I tied them together. I trimmed the warp pieces short. 

To remove the base of the tree from the loom, I removed two warp pieces at a time and knotted them together securely. 

Trim the ends as close to the knots as you can.

I used yellow yarn to finger crochet a 'star' for the top of my tree. (I learned how to do finger crochet from Yarn Whimsies for the Holidays and I absolutely love it!) After making a quick string of crochet, I tied it off, then tied it to the tree. This blocked the trimmed warp pieces from being seen. I cut a tiny piece of yellow and pushed it into the center so that my star would be filled in rather than hollow. 

Then I cut little bits from colorful yarn scraps. 

I used a toothpick to push the yarn into the weaving. No glue in this project!

 Here's my finished woven Christmas tree ornament, hanging on the tree at night.

All the yarn in this project, except the brown, was given to me by Premier Yarns. You may recognize the greens of the tree from the coaster and trivet project. The blue was left over from my knitted beanie. The white and red are both from the patriotic kumihimo bracelets the Cub Scouts made. Thanks again, Premier!