Cross Stitch Christmas Tree

beautiful traditional Christmas tree stitch

Posted by Britta J.

About

I designed this as a nice easy traditional Christmas cross-stitch pattern that could be done in an evening. I am going to mount it in a card and send it to my parents as a Christmas card :) Alternatively it could be framed and hung on the wall as a Christmas decoration, stitched onto a garment using waste canvas as a gift, or stitched onto plastic canvas and cut out to make a hanging ornament. The pattern will be on sale soon at http://www.cross-stitch-ideas.com/ in a huge cheap bundle with lots of other easy Christmas designs :)

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You Will Need (8 things)

  • Scissors
  • Embroidery Needle
  • Metallic gold Embroidery Thread from Madeira (No.4 Color 4004)
  • Yellow Embroidery Thread (DMC 307 used)
  • White Aida Fabric
  • Brown Embroidery Thread (DMC 801 used)
  • Green Embroidery Thread (DMC 699 used)
  • Red Embroidery Thread (DMC 321 used)

Steps (6 steps, 240 minutes)

  1. 1

    Print out the chart and find the center. Fold your piece of aida vertically and horizontally to find the centre of that too, and make that your starting point. This ensures that you won't end up with lots of space on one side and run out of space on the other. I worked my way down, marking off with an orange marker on the chart as I went to keep track of my place.

  2. 2

    Here all the green is completed! I was almost tempted to leave it like this, as a simple two-colour silhouette. But I wanted to see what it would look like completed so I went on...

  3. 3

    Next I filled in all the red candles and followed that chart to add them on the branch tips as well.

  4. 4

    Then I used yellow to add the star and the candle flames. The chart called for french knots but I substituted two short backstitches for each, you could also use a seed bead or even a spot of fabric paint.

  5. 5

    Next I added the trunk, nice and quick bit to do.

  6. 6

    Finally I backstitched the glows around the candle flames and the star. You might notice I deviated from the chart a bit and changed the glow around the star, I think it looks better this way so I edited the pattern file to be like this. I went all out and used a single strand of metallic gold Madeira thread, which gave it a lovely luxery Christmassy look :)