Felt Ornament Tutorial - Christmas Tree Ornament with Beads and Embroidery - Beginner Friendly

Hello and welcome. Today I'm going to be working on a felt ornament and I'm making a Christmas tree. It's my first time doing this so follow along with me and we'll figure it out together. I have two colors of felt, I have teeny tiny little beads here, some polyfill to fill my ornament when I'm done, and some scissors and small needles and a little piece of string that I'm going to use, as well as my handy dandy box of scrap thread which I'll be using as well. so I'll start off by drawing a basic shape of a Christmas tree on my green felt here I'm just kind of winging it and in terms of size I don't want it to be teeny tiny it doesn't have to be huge either I'm kind of aiming for like five inches tall and once you've finished drawing it you can cut it out okay so here's my little Christmas tree shape looks pretty good I think next step i'm going to trace it on my green felt so that i have a second christmas tree that is more or less the exact same size okay great now i have my two trees and i can move on to using my brown felt to make some little stumps for the trees so you'll want to draw out a shape that feels right if you want a really long stump make it longer than this but for me this felt right I'll just add a little bit of extra height here So that there's room to glue it on the back and then you're doing the same thing you did with the tree Where you just trace over your first shape and then cut it out. So you have two of the same Wow This is going so well so far okay, now I'm going to use my glue gun and I'm gonna glue the little stumps on the back of the tree and don't worry because The this this will be the back of your project like the inside of your project so you won't see i suppose if you wanted to stitch them on you could but i just didn't want any like stitching to show up on that part i just want nice clean stitching all around my ornament instead so i'm going to do it this way so yours should look something like this now as you can see on this one i kind of screwed it up and had to put it on the other side but it still looks fine so now if you lay your two trees on top of each other all the lines should more or less match up doesn't have to be perfect if they don't match up you can use a pair of scissors to trim them so that they are kind of as close as can they can be whoa what the heck this side definitely needs to be trimmed okay now it's time for the fun part and i know what you're thinking i'm already having fun but now we get to decorate the tree i'm using satin dmc floss and if anyone's used this before they know that's a crazy decision because it is really difficult to work with that's why i'm going to separate it. So I'm using like one strand of it threading the needle with this stuff is like not a fun task Here you can see I'm trying it multiple times but because I mean decorating a Christmas tree and I really want it to sparkle. I'm gonna use this floss I mean look at this stuff. It's all over the place Okay, I'm tying a knot at the end here. And oh by the way i'm using about a size 5 needle for anyone wondering and one or two knots should secure your floss and then i'll be ready to start stitching so this is more or less the shape i want to do my stitches in like a crisp zigzag thing and i'm going to be doing back stitches for that so i'll start on the underside always on the underside and pull your floss through you're going a couple like millimeters from the edge and I'm going to do a stitch length about a centimeter long and I'll pull it all the way through and then I'm going to jump forward about a stitch length pull it all the way through and I'll go back through down through the tail of that previous stitch and pull it all the way through and I'll just keep repeating that process. I hate working with this floss. Okay my first line's a little wonky but that doesn't matter it just adds to the cuteness and then before i get to the edge i'm gonna pivot here and start going down the other way and again i'm just kind of using that back stitch for all of these stitches a split stitch works too sometimes i think i uh do that instead of a back stitch whatever is easier working with the the satin floss is kind of like it's a little bit trickier you kind of have to just do what you can with it all right making my way down making my way down um i ran out of floss So I'm just showing you what you do. You're going to trim it, but leave enough space to tie a knot and going to tie one or two knots. Just make it secure. Struggling hard here with this floss. Okay. New video. Tie your knots and then trim it again. And then you're going to rethread your needle and pick up where you left off. Okay. So I'm finished adding those zigzags and now I can move on to adding lights. I'm using my beads for that. I have two kinds. This time I'm just going to use some regular DMC floss. So much easier to work with and I'm picking a color that's similar to my tree because I want the floss to be like I don't want it to be noticeable. You have to switch to a teeny tiny needle for this because you'll find these small beads will not fit over a size fine needle there goes you'll notice that i already came up through the fabric before i put the bead on my needle that is important and then you let it slide down and then you're just going to do like a little anchoring stitch like that if you prefer to do a second stitch go ahead and do so because the bead's so small and lazy i'm just going to do one and then i'm going to move on to the next little spot on the line, and I'm going to add another bead. This blue one looks good. You can do this however you like. You can space them further apart, whatever you think looks good. Again, I'm going to do my anchoring stitch. I know that bead is going to fall into place. Very cute. And here is how my first little line looks. I think it looks pretty cute. And I'll remind you that this is my first time doing this as well, so I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm having fun and it's looking pretty good. With the larger beads I am actually doing two anchoring stitches because one doesn't feel like quite enough. So once you're done with the bedazzling we're going to attach the little hanging string. I'm just using the glue gun again because I don't want to see stitches right there. If you prefer to use embroidery go nuts but this is just how I did it. For the second tree you have a couple options. You can do the exact same kind of thing on it like decorate it with beads or you can just say this is the back no one's going to see it anyway and I'm not decorating it because that took a while. As you probably guessed that is the option that I went with. So now I'm going to do my blanket stitch and start closing up or attaching the two trees um i'm using dmc floss i'm using like i think it's o2 so it's not bright white um i split my floss in half so i have three strands of floss that i'm working with so they'll be noticeable stitches they won't be too too delicate so i'm going to be using a blanket stitch and to start your blanket stitch go into the inside of one of these and pull your floss all the way through until you feel the knot. Very good. And next you are going to come through like so, kind of like not right at the edge. And as you're pulling through, once you get to about here, you're going to thread your needle underneath and pull like that. And then you'll jump a stitch length away. Again, you're staying not too close to the edge, pulling through, pulling through slowly and then once you get to about this point you are going to thread your needle through like this voila and then just keep going like that and you will gradually start to see a nice line of stitches take shape. Okay so I'm making my way and I'm almost at the point where I'm close to this hanging bit so I'm just going to show you how I navigate around it. Again nothing crazy just doing my usual stitch and kind of like going as close up to it as I can and then I'll just I guess I just kind of went yeah like not through it but the next possible place so there's no real opening near it and then just obviously make sure the string doesn't get like incorporated into your stitch that's probably the hardest thing about doing blanket stitch around this tree is all of the various places that your floss can get stuck as you go um the string all of the little corners it's not fun but I promise it'll be worth it as you're going you may find that your um two threads are not lining up again you may need to trim them as you work just be careful not to cut through any of your stitches when you do that so I've gotten to the point where I am almost at the end of my floss here and so I'll need to tie a knot and then begin stitching again. So I'm just going to tie like a double knot right where I am and then I'll trim it like really close so I don't see any string sticking out and then I'll just re-thread my needle and start that blanket stitch again. But also this is a good place to run out of floss because I'm actually going to start adding some of the polyfill before my tree gets too closed. I'm going to take a modest amount here try to shove it down as far as I can so it reaches the the very tip and those first two branches and I'm just using my finger to do this um there may be something else that works better like a pencil or something like that but for now I'm just doing it like this and feel free to do it however you want i'm being somewhat careful that i'm not stretching it too far because i don't want my um blanket stitch stitches to get loosened up at all um also if you don't want yours to look like super full you could just add a little bit of stuffing it really depends on like how pillowy you want it to look that's all i'm going to add for now because i want to still be able to do my blanket stitch with some ease and I will not fully close it I just I just want to do a few more stitches close it up a little bit more before I do the final stuffing okay so I have gone all the way around the trunk and I have left this like about one inch gap which I think is gonna be enough for me to finish stuffing this tree. So I'm just taking a little bit and again just kind of winging this, shove it in, try to get it to the corners. I'm going to try to fill that little tiny trunk. I don't know how well that's gonna go but you'll find out. And once you are finally happy with it you can go ahead and finish that blanket stitch and close it all up. Okay this is my last stitch. I'm freaking out. The finish line is near. I'm going to tie myself a nice secure knot or two and then I'm going to trim it. I'm going to make sure there's no little bits of like cotton fill sticking out and make it look really nice and then I'll be done. Give it a little squish and there you have it friends. A tiny little felt beaded tree for your large Christmas tree. a little christmas tree for your large christmas tree one more time for the beads thanks for watching