Felt Christmas Decorations

Felt Christmas decorations, finished by hand

Choosing felt Christmas decorations

Felt Christmas decorations are characters rather than shapes, and that changes how you choose them. A glass bauble is picked for its colour and size. A felt robin or reindeer is picked for who it is, and for the company it will keep on the branch beside it.

Our felt range falls into three loose families. There are the winter and woodland animals, such as the robin, hare, reindeer and penguin. There are the figures borrowed from the toy box, the rocking horse and the nutcracker among them. And there are the festive favourites: Father Christmas, alongside pieces worked in beaded felt, where a candy cane or a Christmas jumper takes on a raised, textured finish that plain felt does not have.

The easiest way to buy is to let one family lead. A tree hung with woodland animals reads as a single idea, where one of everything can look like a collection still being gathered. Give the figures room to be seen whole, at eye level and towards the tips of the branches, with plainer decorations between them. Felt figures read best in small numbers, so a handful placed with care will say more than a branch crowded with characters.

Why choose felt Christmas tree decorations

Felt is made by matting fibres together rather than weaving them, and that is what makes it such a good material for a decoration. It can be cut into a crisp silhouette, a hare's ears or the curve of a rocking horse's runners, and the edge stays clean without a hem. It is dense enough to hold a flat shape with nothing inside it, and its soft, matt surface gives stitched detail somewhere to show.

Felt also forgives. A figure knocked from a branch simply lands, and can be picked up, straightened and hung again. It is a material made to be handled, which is exactly what happens to felt Christmas ornaments on a well-loved tree.

Felt Christmas decorations FAQ's

The difference is the surface. The plain felt figures are soft and matt, so their character comes from the shape and the stitched detail. The beaded pieces have a raised, textured finish, and the beads give them a little more presence from across a room. On the tree, they do different jobs: let the plain felt figures carry the theme, and use the beaded pieces sparingly as accents, so their texture stands out rather than competing. Mixed this way, the two give a tree a change of texture without bringing in another material, which keeps a felt scheme calm and consistent.

Most of our felt Christmas decorations measure between 10cm and 14cm at their widest or tallest point, large enough to read clearly from across a room. The slimmest are the candy cane, 5cm wide and just over 11cm tall, and the nutcracker, 3cm wide and 10.5cm tall, while a larger nutcracker stands 19cm tall. All of them are flat rather than rounded, between 1cm and 2.5cm deep, so they hang close to the branch and face the room. That suits the front of a tree, a tree set against a wall, or anywhere a decoration will be seen from one side. Exact dimensions are on each product page.

Spot clean only. That is the care instruction for every felt and beaded decoration in this collection, and it means treating a mark where it is rather than washing the whole piece. Dab, rather than rub, with a barely damp cloth, and let the decoration dry flat at room temperature before it goes back on the tree. Never soak felt or put it in a washing machine, because water can loosen the fibres, soften the shape and pull the stitching out of line. On the beaded pieces, work around the beads rather than across them so the thread is not dragged. Most of the time, a soft, dry brush is all that is needed to lift the dust of a season on display.

Each felt design is shaped from felt and given its character with stitched detail added by hand, while the beaded pieces are beaded by hand over a felt body. Some of the felt designs are made in the Netherlands. Because every piece is finished by hand, each product page notes that small variations should be expected: a stitch placed a little differently, a bead sitting at a slightly different angle. Those differences are part of the design rather than a flaw, and they show most clearly when two of the same figure hang side by side.