How to make: Easy Peasy Tree Decorations

Christmas tree decorations are one of my favourite things about December. I love the really lavish ones you get in department stores like Harrods and Selfridges and for more affordable ones, the rows of colourful, sparkling ornaments in Paperchase. Monsoon also have some utterly cute characters and crafty, felty designs. Yet while I like to treat myself to a couple of new ones a year, I have everything I need to make my own at home. And when it takes just five minutes to make each one, it’s much quicker than heading to the shops and spending your afternoon standing in a slow-moving queue.

I discovered this most fabulous of glittery fabric via Hatastic! designer Chloe Hayward, which is ideal for Christmas tree decorations. Chloe made some Halloween horns for my up and coming glitter book, using a sheet of red. It’s a densely covered woven backed fabric that’s hard-wearing enough to be used for footwear, fashion and furnishings. I treated myself to a batch recently. They are sold in Josy Rose, for £2.45 per A4 sheet and the colour chart is  impressive. The sheets can be cut with ordinary scissors and either glued down with a glue gun or carefully stitched through with a very sharp needle. Like felt, they don’t fray, making them not just gorgeous, but versatile too! Hooray!

They can be cut up into any shape you want, or to make it really simple Josy Rose sell die-cut, pre-cut shapes made from the same fabric. If you’re cutting inside them (like the buttons on this ethnic snowman), then use a craft knife and mat.

To make them, cut two equal sizes of felt and take a small piece of ribbon. Stitch your glitter motif onto one side and at the top end, stitch the ribbon in, folded over to create a loop. Use an embroidery stitch of your choice to join both sides together. Running and whip stitch work well.

Keep them minimalist, or bling them up with sequins, gems and glitter glue tubes. Add them to your tree, perhaps against some other homemade decorations, like the hand written wishes currently featured at The Geffrye Museum, or like me, dangle them on your fairy lights.

Making and Teaching

As you know I love making stuff but I also like helping other people make stuff too! As a community artist and artist educator I get to work all over London with all sorts of people from different communities, ages etc.

For the last three years I have been working on the Geffrye Museum's Asian Women's project to engage the women of Hackney in East London with the museum. So far there have have been two groups, the first are an over 50s group who have lost their husbands and their children have grown up, so meeting up is an important part of their social life. They are all very lovely and so creative. Most of the time I just give them materials and they instinctively know what to do with them!

The second group is a younger Asian Women's group who live in a local estate. They are mainly in their 20s and don't work, so while their children are at school, they meet up and do craft activities together.

This Spring I worked with both groups to create an installation in the museum inspired at the recent Maharaja: the Splendour of India's Royal Courts exhibition at the V&A with the concept of creating a modern day Moghul living room. The groups created soft furnishings using hand embroidery, applique, sewing and painting.

The pieces aren't stereotypically Asian looking, they have a very modern East/West twist to them, representing the women's own lifestyles.

We started with an embroidery project, using different stitches to create a group wall hanging displayed at the back and then the women worked on individual projects for their own homes.

The quality of the work was amazing, one lady claimed she'd never done embroidery before but had seen her sisters do it and came up with this remarkable floral design! Wow! For most of the women it was the first time they had done any embroidery in ages but old school memories of learning the skill came flooding back to them in no time.

The installation is still on display at the museum in the downstairs art rooms so pop in and see it if you can!