DIY Felt Christmas Tree

Last year I saw several felt Christmas trees on pinterest and thought it was a great idea.  It’s a small miracle that I didn’t forget about it and a bigger miracle that I got it made this early in December.  It was really easy and fun to make. 

The great thing about felt is that it sticks to itself. You can take the ornaments on and off again and again and the stickiness never goes away.  It’s also nice that when you cut it you don’t have to worry about it unraveling.  These two things make it nice to work with for this project.  An added bonus is that felt is cheap!

Materials:

Felt in various colors such as:

Green for the tree. I used a 1/2 yard. You can find felt on the bolt at JoAnn’s or Walmart.

Blue/white for a background (optional) (I was going to do white on the bottom for snow and blue on top for sky but realized with the dogs walking by it all the time the white would be a bad idea.  So all blue was my choice.)  You don’t have to have a background at all. I chose to have one because it gives Munchkin more room to place the ornaments.

Your favorite colors for ornaments

Freezer paper

Sewing Machine & thread matching your felt

Scissors

Sharpie

To Make It:

1.  I started by making the ornaments.  I’m not good at drawing so I Googled Christmas ornament templates and printed several off.  Then I took the freezer paper, placed it on top of the printed templates and traced them.  I did manage to draw a few, such as holly, Christmas lights and candles.

1a. Cut around the traced ornaments but not on the line.  Iron them on to the felt.

1b. Cut the ornaments out.  Once you’ve finished cutting it out, you can remove the freezer paper and use it again.  When you iron it will stick again and again and again.  Just like that, you have felt ornaments for your felt Christmas tree.

2. Cut out the tree.  I did this by folding the 1/2 yard of felt in half.  Than I drew the tree.  I didn’t like it so I turned it over and had The Man draw it.  His was much better so we went with his.  Then I cut it out.  When you unfold it you have a tree.

2a. For the background, I measured the wall where I wanted to hand the tree.  Then I cut the felt to cover the wall.  Then I placed the tree in the middle and pinned it down, just on the spikes of the tree to keep it in place as I sewed.  I also put a small piece of brown on the bottom as the trunk. (Sorry about the funky sunlight in the photos!)

2b.  Using the blanket stitch, sew the tree to the background.  It’s an easy sewing job, as the lines are pretty straight.  It shouldn’t take too long, unless you have a kiddo who wants your attention. It might be best to wait for nap time.

YAY, you’re almost done!  See how easy it is?  To hang it up I used Command strips, the ones for pictures and posters.  They look like Velcro. I figured the side that stays on the felt can be used year after year and I can just buy replacements for the ones for the wall.  I used 6 large ones.  So far it’s working great.

While I don’t think the felt tree will completely keep Munchkin from being fascinated with the real tree and the plush ornaments we put on the bottom, I think it will be helpful in redirecting her attention.  I was able to tell her no about playing with the plush Eeyore and bring her over to her tree.  She played with it for about 5 minutes which for me was a win.  Right now her favorite part is pulling all the ornaments off so I keep putting them up.  I figure we’ll get a few years out of it.