Sew a snowy cottage Christmas tree decoration: free sewing pattern

This makes a Christmas decoration measuring approximately 6cm wide by 6cm tall.

You will need...

● Dark brown felt square for main body of house
● 20cm square of white felt for roof
● scrap of red felt for the door
● scrap of grey felt scrap – for the chimney
● couple of handfuls of stuffing
● small piece of wire (we used a plastic-covered wire tie from a box of freezer bags)
● embroidery thread in the following colours: grey, for stitching on the chimney; cream, for the window frames; yellow, for curtains; blue, for curtains; green, for the climbing plant and Christmas tree
● gold metallic thread for fairy lights
● needle
● scissors
● pattern templates (below)

Print out the pattern templates (below).

Draw round the patterns on one side of the felt and cut out the following:

Two house sides, two house ends and one house base from brown felt
Two roofs from white felt
One chimney from grey felt
One door from red felt

Sew the chimney to the house
Using grey thread and overstitch method, sew the chimney to the middle of one house end. Match it up to the grey lines on the end pattern piece – you want your chimney to bulge out slightly from the end of the house. 

Stitch the walls together
It's easier to stitch the walls together, then do the embroidery afterwards. 

Using brown thread and overstitch method (with the seams on the outside), sew the front house side to the house end. Continue with the rest of the sides until you have a cube with no roof and no base.

Start embroidering
Sew the door to the front side, using brown running stitch for panelling.

Sew the windows, first using cream thread, sew your window outline using long stitches. (Keep your needle threaded with cream thread and set aside.) the way (but keep it attached). We did these in stages using two needles and cream and yellow thread…

Using yellow thread and long stitches, add the curtains.

When you’ve done the curtains, finish off the crossbars of the windows – so the curtains look as though they’re behind glass.

Decorate the other sides
Stitch a window and a Christmas tree to the back of the house and some creeper on the ends, using running stitch.

Sew on fairy lights using gold thread. To make a bigger ‘knot’, poke the needle in and out of the felt, then wrap the thread around the needle three or four times before pulling it through into a big knot.

Attach the base
Before you do this, stuff the chimney. Push some stuffing up into the chimney using something small and pointed such as a cocktail stick.

Now sew the base to the house with brown thread and overstitching.

Sew on the roof
With white thread and overstitch method, sew one side of the roof to the house.

Attach the other side of the roof at the top (so the two roof pieces are stitched together at the pitch of the roof). Now stitch the side seams.

Leave a gap on the last section (where it attaches to the front/back of the house) in order to insert stuffing.

Add a hanging loop
Using white thread, stitch a hanging loop onto the middle of the roof.

Add the smoke and stuff the house
Take a small piece of stuffing and pull it out into a long ‘string’. Take your bit of wire and twist the long piece around the wire so it’s reasonably secure. Now stuff the end of this into the top of the chimney and twist so it looks like a plume of smoke.

Fill the house with stuffing – it’s up to you how bulgy you want it to look. 

Finally, stitch up the gap between the roof and the house front/back. 

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