Christmas Tea Towels

You may have gathered if you’ve been reading here a little while that I run a ladies craft group at my church. It’s pretty low-key and only meets every fortnight during school term time, but they are a lovely group of ladies and I enjoy hanging out with them. Most days we all bring whatever project we are working on for a morning to craft and chat and share morning tea. But at the end of each year we do a Christmas project together for our final morning. This year’s project was decorating a Christmas tea towels with a felt tree.

I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. That’s my sample up the top but as you can see by all the other pictures, these ladies  are a creative bunch. I knew that if I provided the inspiration and the felt, they would all come up with their own version.

We each started with a couple of 4″ squares of felt in light green, dark green and red cut into strips, plus a 1.5″ square of yellow and a 2″ x 1″ piece of brown. Some towels are stitched with white sewing thread while others are stitched with stranded embroidery thread.

I especially like this one where she cut the strips using pinking shears. The felt doesn’t fray but the pinked edges look pretty.

If you’re thinking of a similar project with a group, most of the ladies did finish stitching on their felt in the morning – we meet for 2 hours with a morning tea break in the middle. These are ladies that can all sew so add a little more time if you are working with beginners.

You could easily adapt this Christmas tree to decorate a cushion or bag instead. The finished tea towel would be a fabulous gift with a kitchen utensil or two, or home-baked treat.