How to make beautiful Christmas baubles (with free plotter template)

Dear community,
in this blog post you can find easy instructions for making beautiful Christmas baubles (with free plotter template) – perfect for Christmas and New Year’s Eve!

High time to take care of the tree decorations. Whether they are glittery, matt or colourful, one thing is essential – Christmas tree baubles!

For centuries, they have decorated trees with all possible colours and shapes.

This year we wanted to try something different. We decided to make homemade decorations, because it was something we could do together that would be fun, and not just for the kids.

Our baubles are made of fabric this year. Very simple, very modest, and above all unbreakable.

For the 11th door, I have created a Christmas bauble file that you can download in .svg and .dxf formats for your cutting plotter or BERNINA DesignWorks.

If you do not have a plotter or the DesignWorks software, you can use the .jpeg picture as a freehand template.

Download Christmas bauble file for cutting plotter

Download Christmas bauble file for BERNINA DesignWorks

You will need:

• Woven material for the baubles
• Little ribbons
• Flex or flock foil (alternatively, embroidery thread and Vliesofix)

Christmas tree baubles sewing instructions:

Variant 1: Printed Christmas baubles

Step 1:

Plot the Christmas bauble motif with the plotter on flex or flock foil and peel off the excess foil. We drew circles on our bauble material that were a little larger than our motifs. Cut off pieces of string to your preferred length for hanging the baubles.

Step 2:

Cut out the circles and press on the motifs using heat transfer (with an iron or transfer press). 

Step 3:
If you like, you can stitch on a pretty ribbon using the Freemotion Couching Foot #43.

 Step 4:

Now insert the ribbon between the two circles.

Step 5:

Stitch the two layers of fabric together with a long straight stitch and fix the ribbon in between. For this I think a slightly frayed look is quite attractive.

That’s it – finished!

Variant 2: Freehand stitched Christmas baubles

Step 1:
Cut the circles and string as for Variant 1.

Step 2:
Transfer the motif to Vliesofix, transfer this to the selected fabric for freehand application, and cut it out. Now iron this onto the Christmas baubles. 

Step 3:
Lower the feed dog, select embroidery thread as upper and lower thread (this is not as ‘stiff’ as sewing thread) and use the darning foot #9, free-motion embroidery foot #24, or the BSR (=BERNINA Stitch Regulator) to sew on the appliqué freehand.

Step 4:
You can decorate the bauble with pretty ribbons using the Freemotion Couching Foot #43. 

Step 5:
The two circles are stitched together as for Variant 1 with the ribbon fixed in between.

That’s it – finished!