How to make embroidered Christmas pendants (with free embroidery template)

Dear community,
in this blog post you can find easy instructions on how to make embroidered Christmas pendants (with free embroidery template) – the perfect decoration for Christmas!

Today is the 4th day of Advent and there is a surprise for you hiding behind the little door of the BERNINA calendar.

I have made tree decorations for you that can be touched by little children’s hands, dogs’ wagging tails and playing kittens without you having to worry. This kind of bauble will not be damaged in the slightest should it accidentally fall to the ground.

It is light as a feather and made from soft felt.

To make it you will only need

• Quite stiff felt (2 sheets of about 10×10 cm), approximately 2 mm thick
• A 15 cm long piece of ribbon,
• 3-4 different colours of embroidery thread, or metallic thread,
• A small loop, a little bell for decoration
• your sewing machine, of course, and the embroidery file, which you can download here:

Freebie tree decoration

First, stretch only the fleece backing in the embroidery frame and stitch Colour 1, which is the outline of the entire ball.

Now lay the felt on it. It should exceed the stitched outline all around by at least 1 cm.

Now fix the felt around the outline exactly with Colour 2.

Now it should look like this: Select an embroidery thread colour that goes with the felt.

Now decorate your Christmas bauble. Simply use your favourite colour or the colours that match your felt the best.

I stitched the stars in gold and the lines in between with a graduated-colour metallic thread from Mettler. This gave it a lovely glitter.

Before you stitch the last colour, remove the embroidery frame from the machine, but do NOT remove the embroidery from the frame. Turn it over and lay the frame in front of you on the table.

Take hold of your 15 cm long piece of ribbon and make it into a loop. Point the open end inwards, and attach it with a piece of adhesive tape so it doesn’t slip.

Now lay the second sheet of felt on the back side and also fix this with adhesive tape to prevent it slipping. I always use 5 mm wide tapes that are generally used for marking quilts with stripes.

Turn the embroidery frame over and fix it carefully in the sewing machine. Now stitch the last colour, which again goes around the outline, but this time stitch a little tighter and stitch over the first seam exactly. Also, connect the two sheets of felt together and stitch the hanging ribbon into place between them.

Now take everything out of the frame and remove the adhesive tape and the fleece backing from the embroidery frame completely. Now cut out the bauble about 1-2 mm from the embroidered outline with a sharp pair of scissors, being careful not to accidentally cut off the hanging ribbon.

Now you can decorate your bauble with lots of little loops, bells or other embellishments.

Have lots of fun stitching and decorating, and I wish you a lovely 4th December.

Tatjana