With the Christmas decor going up, we decided that we wanted to craft our own William Morris garland to decorate the mantle this year. What better way to decorate than with our William Morris fabric! We actually made the garland using all our different Morris fabrics, but of course you can either choose to do this or use all the same if you’d prefer!

For this project you’ll need:

• Fabric in your choice of William Morris designs from our collection
• Fabric cutter or scissors
• A bit of cardboard for the pattern – you can just use the cardboard from a cereal box before you recycle it!
• Material for the tree trunk, we used a red felt material
• A ruler

We cut out a cardboard pattern that measures 5.5inches base and 7.3inches tall – you can use whatever size works for you, but we wanted them to sit on the mantle so didn’t want to go to big but not too small so they still make an impact. The tree stump measures 1.7 inches wide and 3.8inches tall.

Once you’ve got your two patterns, we’re ready to start!

Place the pattern onto the fabric you’ve chosen and cut round it – we used a complimentary felt fabric for the tree trunk in a red colour, you can get creative – a gold glitter fabric could look fabulous!

You can fold the fabric and place the pattern on top to cut two out together so they match exactly. Do the same for the tree trunk. Sew the felt trunk to the bottom of the ‘tree’ facing upwards. Then put the two pattern faces together and stitch along the two longest sides of the tree as shown in the photo, back tacking both edges so it won’t fall apart.

Turn inside out, we used a pencil to push out the point. Press along each edge with an iron and fill with stuffing, making sure to press firmly into the point. Don’t fill too full at the bottom edges as we’ll come back to this after stitching.

Starting from the outer corner, hand sew the edges together from the trunk. Finish securely. Now with this half sewn, push more stuffing into the corners so your tree is nice and even. Then, do the same for the opposite.

Now it’s time to stuff the tree trunk! With matching thread to the felt, blanket stitch the long side and the bottom. Finish securely and stuff the trunk through the one remaining open seam.

Finish the last seam with a blanket stitch to finish off and you’re done! Just repeat the steps as many times as needed to finish off all your trees.

If you’ve crafted your own, let us know!