Valentine's, Halloween and Christmas Easy-Sew Decorations with Free Templates

If you want a simple sewing project, or you need to create a lot of home-made gifts on a tight budget, then these bright and cheerful fabric decorations are a great idea!

No clever sewing is involved. They don't take long to make. Certainly they don't cost much! They could even be made from remnants of fabric leftover from other projects.

These decorations can be made by young children, busy parents and teachers, or the elderly. And if you are a member of a social club or community group, then this project offers a relatively quick way of making a gift of everyone in the group which can also form an eye-catching display.

To make these easy-to-sew decorations you will need:

• felt of various colours - off-cuts are fine to use.
• ribbons.
• sewing needle.
• embroidery cotton.
• seasonal stickers.
• paper to make template - old newspaper is fine, or old envelopes.
• pen to draw the template.
• scissors.

Optional Ideas

If you don't wish to purchase stickers, then you could use fabric paints to embellish your decorations, or embroidery. Or you could draw out your own 'stickers', paint them then glue them on. Or try using old buttons or beads to embellish them, or broken ear-rings.

Add a small silky tassell to the base of the decorations for a bit of additional colour and charm. Or try adding a cat's bell on a thin strip of ribbon.

The decorations can be stuffed with a piece of kapok or cotton wadding. Or perhaps you've got a few odd socks lying around - cut these into small pieces, and use this as stuffing.

Add a tag of coloured paper, held in place by the same stiches which hold the decoration together, so that people can add a hand-written message to the decoration which they made. Crimping scissors give a pretty edge to these tags.

The photograph above shows a table-top-sized Christmas tree festooned with the easy-to-sew decorations described in this Hubpage. Xmas trees, Xmas stockings and hearts made from felt fabric and using a ribbon as a hook each carry a small handwritten seasonal message to the families of the makers. This idea makes a fun project for any social group of people, as the sewing required is very basic and bright seasonal stickers are so simple to use. But put it all together on a tree, as shown here, and immediately you have an eye-catching and colourful focal point.

To make the template, fold a square of paper in half and draw the template. You don't have to use quality paper. An old envelope or the side of an empty cereal box will work fine.

For the tree and heart, draw half of the shape, as in the image to the left. Unfold the paper. If it isn't quite the shape you want, fold it in half again and re-draw it until the opened-up template looks right. It's ok to do this a few times, if you need to.

Cut out the template and pin it to a piece of cloth, which is folded double. Felt is best as this won't fray, but it's ok to use remnants of other fabric. Folding the cloth double is not absolutely necessary but this will save you the bother of cutting out two shapes separately for each decoration.

Making the Loop

Take a length of coloured ribbon and fold it into a loop. You can catch the ends together with a few casting-on stitches, then continue sewing round the edge of the decoration. If you use a contrasting colour of embroidery cotton or silk, this will add detail to the finished item.

You can slip in a bit of kapok to plump the decoration a little, if you choose. Or you could add a small silky tassel to the pointy-end of the heart for a bit of extra charm.

Decorate with stickers, or with smaller shapes of felt sewn or glued on.