Twelve Days of Ornaments, Day 4: Felt Trees

Day four brings us felt tree ornaments. These are based on ornaments sold at an upscale designer store a few years ago (patterns are our own). These are perfect for older children who can handle a needle and thread. Younger kids can do the painting.

Felt Tree Ornaments

Materials:

Felt
Embroidery floss
Needle and pins
Scissors
A pencil or skewer
Craft paint
Stuffing (cotton batting)
Patterns
Double-sided tape

Print out our patterns or have your kids draw their own! Cut out the shapes. DOWNLOAD OUR PATTERN HERE.

Here’s an easy tip when you’re cutting a pattern from felt. Put a few pieces of double-stick tape on the back of your pattern and adhere it to the felt. Once you’ve cut it out, you can pull the pattern off and adhere it again until the tape’s “sticky” is used up!

Cut out two tree shapes for each ornament.

Choose a contrasting color of embroidery floss and sew simple running stitches in lines across the tree shapes. Go back and fill in the stitches (or do a back-stitch). Continue until you get to the top of the tree (I used 3 strands of floss for the stitching). The stitches do not have to be perfect. It’s more fun if they’re wonky.

You can embroider on both tree sides or choose to paint on the other side (more on that later). But, when you’ve decorated both tree shapes, pin them together, right sides out.

Using a simple overcast stitch or a fancier blanket-stitch, start at the bottom left edge of your tree and join the two pieces together. Stop when you’ve reached the bottom right edge of your tree.

Make a tiny ball of stuffing and push it to the top of your tree with a pencil or a skewer. Continue adding stuffing until your tree is as fluffy as you want it (the trunk does not have to be stuffed. Continue sewing the bottom of your tree together.

Take a stitch in the top of your tree for a hanger and tie a knot.

If you have younger kids who want to help, let them paint ornaments on the trees. Squeeze out some craft paint and let them use the eraser end of a pencil to stamp out Christmas balls. This can be done either before or after you have finished your tree.