Felt Christmas Tree: A Wall Tree for Kids, Cone Trees and Needle Felted Minis

"Felt Christmas tree" covers two quite different things. Most people searching it want the children's wall tree: a big green felt triangle on the wall, with felt ornaments a toddler can put on and pull off all December. The other kind is the decoration: small cone trees for a mantel or a table, cut from sheet felt or felted from wool. This page covers both, in the order most people make them.

Five kinds, and how long each one takes

Tree	Made from	Size	Time
Wall tree for kids	Sheet felt, hook-and-loop or buttons	2½–4 ft	An afternoon plus ornaments
Cone tree	Sheet felt over a cone	6–18 in	An hour each
Stacked tree	Felt circles on a dowel	8–14 in	An hour
Felted cone	Wool, wet felted over a resist or knitted and fulled	6–12 in	An evening plus drying
Needle felted mini	Core wool and green roving	3–5 in	Two to three hours

The children's wall tree

The appeal is simple: it is a tree a two-year-old can decorate, undecorate and redecorate forty times a day without breaking anything. Getting it right comes down to three decisions: size, what holds the ornaments on, and how the tree hangs.

Size and felt

About 3 ft (90 cm) tall and 2 to 2½ ft wide at the base suits most toddlers. Craft felt sold off the bolt is usually 36 in or 72 in wide, so a 3 ft tree comes out of one yard. A taller tree needs 72 in felt and puts its top ornaments beyond a small child's reach, which defeats the point. Use a stiff felt of 2 to 3 mm for the tree, or back a soft one with iron-on interfacing: thin felt stretches and sags under its own ornaments within a week.

Draw the tree on paper first. A plain triangle looks like a road sign. Three or four stepped tiers with a slightly ragged edge look like a tree. Add a brown trunk and a yellow star as separate pieces glued or stitched on.

What holds the ornaments

• Hook-side tape on the ornament, nothing on the tree. The hook half of hook-and-loop tape grips felt directly. A dot on the back of each ornament lets it go anywhere on the tree. This is how store-bought wall trees work. It wears the tree's surface slowly, so expect a fuzzy patch where the same spot gets used every day.
• Buttons or pompoms with ribbon loops. Sew a dozen buttons or small pompoms to the tree and give each ornament a ribbon loop. It limits where ornaments go, but it is easier for young children, it is closer to hanging a real ornament, and it does not wear the felt.
• Felt on felt. Felt clings a little to felt, the way pieces on a flannel board do. It is fine on a tree lying flat on the floor and unreliable on a wall.

Ornaments

Cut ornaments double from contrasting felt, with a lighter layer stitched or glued on top for detail: a red ball with a white band, a gift with a ribbon, a star with an embroidered edge. Stitched ornaments outlast glued ones by years. For a toddler, make every ornament too big to pass through a toilet paper tube, about 2 in across at the smallest, and stitch down any button or bead. Simple shapes are the best: balls, stars, candy canes, gifts, mittens, a stocking and a few animals. Felt cat patterns has animal templates to adapt, and felt appliqué covers stitching layered shapes.

Twenty to thirty ornaments is the right number. Fewer looks thin, and more ends up under the sofa.

Hanging it

Stitch a sleeve along the top back edge and slide a thin dowel through it, or put two loops at the top corners. Hang it with removable adhesive strips or small hooks low enough that the child can reach the top tier, which usually means the bottom edge a few inches above the floor. A tree that only hangs from its top tends to curl at the bottom edge, so put a strip at each lower corner too.

Sheet felt cone trees

Tabletop cone trees are the quickest decorative version. Roll a quarter-circle of card into a cone and tape it, or use a polystyrene cone. Then cover it in one of three ways.

• Plain wrap. Cut a felt quarter-circle a little larger than the cone, wrap it, and stitch the seam with a blanket stitch down the back. Decorate with embroidered stars, French knots or seed beads. This is the tree in the photo above.
• Fringed rows. Cut strips 1½ in deep, snip a fringe two-thirds of the way through, and glue them in rings from the bottom up, each row overlapping the last. It looks like branches from across a room.
• Scales. Cut dozens of felt petals or circles, fold each in half, and pin or glue them in overlapping rows. It takes longer and looks the most like a real tree.

Make three or more trees in different heights, 6, 10 and 14 in for example, in related colors. Felt trees also do not have to be green: white, cream, red and gray sets look deliberate.

A stacked felt tree

Cut about ten felt circles from 6 in down to 1½ in across, taking half an inch off the diameter each time; cut a third of an inch off instead and you get fourteen tiers and a fuller tree. Push a wooden dowel into a small pot filled with plaster, florist's foam or packed sand. Thread the circles onto the dowel from largest to smallest, with a wooden bead or a small square of felt between each to keep the tiers apart. Pinking shears on the circle edges make the tiers look like branches. A star or felt ball on top covers the end of the dowel.

Wet felted and knitted felted cones

Felting gives a tree with no seams that stands up by itself. There are two ways to make one.

Wet felted over a resist. Cut a flat cone-shaped resist from foam underlay, sized by dividing each finished measurement by one minus the shrinkage. Merino shrinks about 40%, so a 10 in tree needs a resist about 17 in tall. Lay green wool over both sides, wet felt it as a seamless cone, open the base, and full it hard over a polystyrene cone so it dries to shape. Resist felting explains how to size the resist so the finished piece comes out the size you planned.

Knitted, then felted. Knit a cone in pure wool yarn, which must not be superwash, at a loose tension, then felt it in a hot wash. The larger tree in the opening photo was made this way. Knitting is quicker than laying out wool, and a ribbed pattern turns into soft ridges. Felting shrinks knitting more in length than in width, so knit it taller than you want it. See felting in knitting for the wash settings.

Either cone can be stuffed with wool, slipped over a card cone, or weighted at the base with a bag of rice so it does not tip.

Needle felted mini trees

Small trees of 3 to 5 in, for a windowsill or an advent table. A 4 in tree with a 2½ in base takes 20 to 25 g, a little under an ounce, of wool when felted firm, mostly cheap core wool under a thin green top layer.

1. Roll core wool tightly into a cone and needle it firm with a 38 gauge needle, turning constantly so it stays round.
2. Flatten the base by needling it against the mat, so the tree stands.
3. Wrap thin layers of green from the base upward and needle them in with a finer 40 gauge needle.
4. For tiers, needle a groove around the cone every inch, then add a fluffy ring of green just above each groove.
5. Add baubles as tiny balls of red or gold wool needled on, or as beads sewn on after felting.

If you have not needle felted before, needle felting for beginners covers the grip and the needles, and a felted gnome uses the same cone shape and stands well beside a tree.

Decorating any of them

A felt tree takes felt decorations better than glass ones, which are too heavy and clash with the soft surface. Small needle felted birds clipped to the branches suit a tabletop tree. Drape a garland of 1 cm felt balls on a tabletop tree, or 2 cm balls on a wall tree; felt garland covers how many you need and how to keep them spaced. Felted Christmas balls and felt Christmas ornaments are for full-size trees. A needle felted angel or Santa makes a topper that will not crack when it falls off, and a needle felted snowman or two can stand at the foot of a tabletop tree.

Storing it

Roll a wall tree around a cardboard tube with tissue between the layers rather than folding it, which leaves creases that never quite drop out. Bag the ornaments separately, or the hook tape on one pulls fibers off the next. Cone and felted trees store upright in a box.