Christmas Mini-Tutorial: Tree Decorations

Hello! For the month of December, I thought it would be fun to share some mini- tutorials and ideas with you for seasonal makes!

We’re starting off with a FREE printable for eight Christmas-themed shapes, that are the perfect size to make into Christmas Decorations at around 3″ tall.

Being a sewing blog, I’m going to show some ideas of how to use these as templates for fabric ornaments, but they could easily be printed on to card-stock and coloured in (maybe a fun activity to keep the kids occupied?).

Materials Needed for fabric decorations

• Christmas Decorations Templates
• Fabric Scraps
• Felt (you can get a festive pack here)
• Bondaweb
• Selection of threads
• Ribbon / String for hanging
• [optional] Buttons / Beads / Bells for decorating

How to make your Christmas Decorations

Cut out your templates – I cut them out roughly, but you can cut closer to the template line if you would like.

Lay some bondaweb on top of the templates (rough side down) and using a pencil, trace around the outline: if you are going to be layering fabrics on top of each other as I have done with the bauble, then trace each separate section.

Roughly cut out the bondaweb templates – I like to trim to the exact shape once it has been fused to the fabric/felt as I find it gives a neater finish and sticks better!

Place the bondaweb rough side down on the Wrong Side of the Fabric and press with an iron until it sticks (it doesn’t take long!). Leave it to cool.

Using the pencil mark as a guide, trim accurately around the shape.

Take your shape and carefully remove the paper layer from the back of the bondaweb. This can be a bit tricky on small pieces (and if you’ve just cut you nails, like I had!!!). A couple of tricks I’ve found for removing the bondaweb paper are;

• Fold over one corner by a small amount (right side to right side), crease and open out – this can help to separate the two layers.
• My preferred option is to use a pin to gently scratch the paper creating a tear, and then use the pin tip to lift the paper off.

Layer your fabrics on top of each other, if doing so (remembering to only remove the paper from one section at a time, as you don’t want to stick the decoration to your ironing board!), and then place on to felt. Press to attach.

Trim the felt to size – I left a little border but you could trim exactly if you prefer.

For the Christmas wreath, if you want a hole in the centre, I find the best way to achieve this is to fold the fabric/felt in half and trim a small hole to give you scissor space to trim more accurately.

[Optional] Add some decorative stitching to your decoration – the bondaweb will hold the fabric in place, but I always like to add a bit of contrast stitching for extra detail!

If you leave the thread tails long, you can pull them through to the back and then bury the threads for a neat finish.

Cut a piece of ribbon/string to a 6″ length for hanging your decoration. You can either sandwich the ribbon between the fabric and felt or, like I have, attach a little gold ‘top-hat’ to your bauble (this one is my first attempt and is a little, shall we say, organic?!) to hide the ribbon ends.

Other Ideas

• Use two layers of felt for each decoration: decorate each side before placing wrong sides together. Sew around the edge, leaving a hole to stuff lightly before finishing sewing for 3D style decorations.
• Instead of making ribbon loops, why not attach them directly to a length of ribbon to make bunting?

You can get the FREE Christmas Printable here and I hope you have lots of fun using them. If you do make anything, please do tag me as I would love to see them!

See you next week for another mini-tutorial!

S x

Today’s sky::: bright blue with a few wispy clouds but cold!

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