Needle Felted Christmas Tree with Star and Gifts

Use the grey/brown Country Sheep batts and roll into a sausage shape, folding only one side in as you wind it up.

With your felting needle stab the loose wispy ends in at the end of the roll to close it.

With your coarse or medium needle, felt the roll into the shape pictured above - one end loose and pointy, the other flat and wider. The basic shape should be about 16cm tall.

Next use long thin batches of green wool batts and cover the top part (about 12cm) with a thin layer. As all of this will be covered later, it does not matter if this is felted down that well or evenly!

Use the same technique to cover the base in red wool. This time only felt down around the base but leave it wispy/unfelted at the top edge.

Once you have covered the whole of the base, fold the unfelted top in and felt it down going into the gap between the red and green wool. This will make the rim of the red pot that the tree sits in.

Stab the tree all over and make sure that the base is flat so it will stand solidly.

Tip: felt a little hollow into the base, away from the sides, as this will help the tree to stand.

Foliage triangles: you will be making up to 20 of these, of different sizes. With this in mind, take your first small portion of green wool.

Fold this flat piece into half.

Keep the folded edge at the top and fold one side in at an angle.

Then fold in the other side to make a triangular shape.

Felt the shape down to secure and firm it up using your coarse or medium needle. Leave the wispy ends unfelted. Make sure to turn the foliage over regularly and felt down from both sides.

Optional: to speed up your work, you could use a 7-Needle Tool & Brush Mat.

Alternatively a 3-Needle Tool will help too. Remember, you will be making quite a few of these triangular shapes!

Spread out the unfelted wispy fibres of your foliage triangle and, starting at the base, place it onto the tree. Felt the wispy ends into the tree to fasten the triangle on.

You can also mix the darker green wool with the lighter one (see our handy free tutorial on how to mix fibres).

Cover all of the tree with these triangles, adding larger ones at the base and smaller ones at the top. Always work from the base upwards.

Using a variety of colours, make little round balls of about 1cm in diameter to decorate the tree. Visit our website for a free tutorial on how to needle felt little balls (pom poms). You can felt the decorations straight onto the tree using your medium felting needle.

Treetop Star: Draw a 5-pointed star like this onto the Water Soluble Paper with a pencil or biro. The star should be about 3cm from the tip of one point to the tip of one of the points opposite it.

Then felt the yellow wool onto the star shape. Fold wispy ends of wool inwards so you stay within the star outline. You can felt this from both sides and remember to lift it off your mat regularly. Once felted neatly from both sides (the Water Soluble Paper will be hidden), cut out the shape, which will neaten it further.

Little gifts: take any colour of your remaining wool and flatten it out.

Then fold this in half (as you did with the foliage triangles).

This time fold in half again lengthways.

Then roll in tightly from the sides until you have a fat little sausage.

Felt down the wispy ends with either your coarse or medium needle. Now felt the shape on the long side, turn 90° and felt again, then turn 90° and felt again... repeat this process until you have a more cuboid shape emerging.

Begin felting down the short sides too. You may have to repeat this and previous step a few times to achieve a box shape that is felted down firmly.

Take a strand of a contrasting wool and twist it into a thin strand between your fingers. Felt one strand all around the long sides. Then use another thin strand and felt all around the short sides.

At the top felt the impression of a bow.

Tip: decorate your tree with our Slap-It-On Fabric Sparkles, Sparkly Stuff or even Angelina Fibre for a more festive look. You can find these products on our website!