Pennies were being pinched this Christmas and the excitement of having my first xmas tree in my own pad was hindered by the thought of buying all the shinies, dangles and flashies to cover all the branches you just paid good money for.  After some reading up online I thought; why not make my own decorations?

Making Christmas tree decorations is surprisingly easy, it just took a few evenings hand stitching in front of the TV and there were soon plenty of stockings, reindeer, robins and hearts to cover a decent tree.

Though my stitching is far from perfect the imperfections just add to the home-made feel and I particularly like the flexibility of being able to choose exactly what I wanted to go on the tree, rather than shopping around for it. Now xmas is over I can’t  wait till next year when I can bring them out again and even add to the collection with more festive shapes.

To make the decorations shown I used an old dress, ribbon collected from beautifully wrapped presents and the stuffing from a very ugly elephant toy my boyfriend won for me at a fair  – sorry Matt. Some may think of this as using bits of old rubbish but I prefer to think of it as part of sustainability. Either way these odds and sods were great materials for my project.

The shapes used for the decorations were found from printing out Christmas themed shapes I found online and then using these as the templates to cut around the fabric.

Step 1:Find a suitable shape online for you decorations.  Wish I’d found this Russian doll template when making mine. Good old google images – and if you search in black and white you are more likely to find a template or stencil shape.

Step 2: Cut out the shapes to make the decorations – front and back.

Step3: Sew around the outline, stuff, add ribbons to hang them from and hey presto – a robbin, reindeer or Russian doll Christmas decoration.