Embroidered Ornament DIY Christmas Tree

Hi there and happy holidays! This embroidery tutorial will show you how to make this cute little Christmas tree ornament. For this project you'll need a 3 inch embroidery hoop, a small piece of fabric, you can use your own design, you can draw it out yourself, or you can use my peel and stick stickers that are available in my Etsy shop. You'll need a pair of embroidery scissors, a small needle, I'm using a size 5, a variety of different embroidery flosses of different colors, and a piece of felt or fabric to back your hoop after, along with a glue gun. Start by unscrewing your hoop, taking the smaller inner circle and placing your fabric over top. Push the outer circle down over top of the fabric and inner hoop, tighten it, and then go around the fabric and make sure it's all nice and tight. You'll be able to tell that it's tight enough when it sounds like a drum. Next, for the design, you can either use the sticker or you can draw it yourself using something like this washable marker. If you're going to use the sticker though, you're going to peel off the top mesh part, like so, and press it down onto the fabric, and then really make sure that it's nice and fused with the fabric. I'm going to be using my embroidery stand, it's just a little bit easier than having to hold the project while you work. The first thing I'm going to do is stitch the stem of the tree. I'm using a brown floss, two strands coming up through the fabric, and I'm stitching about a one centimeter stitch, and then I'm going to jump one centimeter ahead, come up through the fabric, and I'm going to come back down through the tail of my previous stitch. I'm going to repeat this process until I've filled in my entire tree stem, or tree trunk rather. I'm using DMC 08, but feel free to use whatever color, brown or green or whatever you like. When you get to this thicker part at the bottom, I'm just going to come up through the bottom right here and do a long stitch into the bottom of my last stitch. I'm going to just repeat this process, filling this in using satin stitch, until the whole bottom of that thicker base is filled in. When you finish stitching with a certain color, you're going to want to tie it off on the back side, so leave yourself enough room to tie a double knot, and then you're going to trim away the excess floss. Next, I'm going to stitch my branches. I'm using a green floss, and I'm using three strands of floss for these. Again, this is just like how we did the stem or the trunk, it's a back stitch, and I'm just going to be following along with the lines that I've created for myself in the pattern to fill in these branches. And once you finish, you should have something like this. Next, I'm going to work on the lights. To give my tree some sparkle, I'm going to be using the DMC light effects floss. It's a little harder to work with, but it's worth it. So just like before, I'm going to be using that same back stitch, where I'm doing a stitch length, and then I'm jumping ahead and coming back through the tail of my previous stitch. I'm using two strands of the light effects floss. As you can see, it kind of jumps up a little bit more off the fabric than the actual regular floss, so it can be a little tricky to work with, but keep at it. It does create a really nice effect. Once you finish that, you're going to be adding little colorful lights onto your light strings using French knots. So come up through the fabric and then hold the floss with your non-dominant hand, wrap the needle twice, and come back down through a hole right beside where you came up and pull it tight. This particular stitch takes a couple attempts to master, so don't be frustrated if you don't get it the first time. It is a tricky one. Don't actually pull it too tight at the end there, just pull until it is nice and secure. If you pull too tight, you could potentially yank the stitch right back through the fabric. So once you've added a bunch of these nice colorful lights, your tree should look kind of similar to mine, depending on what kind of color palette you've used. It may be totally different, but lots of these nice little lights will give your tree just that extra little bit of pizzazz. So once I'm done with the lights, I'm going to move on to the star. I'm going to reposition my hoop so I have more room to stitch. I'm using the DMC Light Effects floss again, and I'm just using one strand, and I'm just going to go sort of from point to point in no particular pattern, but until I kind of beef up that star. So now that I'm done my star, the final thing I'm going to do is add some little bits of snow to some of the branches, just to give it that fresh fallen snow feel. I'm using six strands of DMC Blanc, so just that's the white floss, and I'm just going to kind of add little sections of snow at random here. Sorry about the filming. I thought I was way more centered than I actually was. Okay, so now that I'm finishing with the stitching, I am going to paint my hoop to give it just a nice like walnut looking finish. If you prefer to use a nice stain, go ahead and do that. This is just kind of the cheapest option. So I have now washed off the stabilizer. It dissolves right in water, and now that my hoop is dry, I've added that as well. Once I'm happy with the positioning in the hoop and it's nice and tight, I'm going to cut away the XX fabric just right down to the hoop. I'm going to use my piece of felt or another fabric backing to cut a circle the same size as my hoop, and then I'm using my glue gun to stick down that felt onto the back, and this will serve as the backing for the hoop. When you're finished, it should look like this. If there's any little bits of glue, you can just cut them away. All that's left is to find yourself a piece of string or a ribbon and hang it on your tree and enjoy!