How to Sew a Felt Christmas Tree

Step 1

So, how to sew a felt Christmas tree

You will need:
• green felt in 2-3 natural shades, 7 A3 sheets (approximately);
• a piece of brown felt;
• backing fabric;
• green buttons, 31 pcs.;
• thread, scissors, needles, pattern paper, pins;
• cord and a dowel for hanging the calendar on the wall;
• ornaments to decorate the tree, 31 pcs.
Sewing process
Stage one: tree pattern
For my tree, the maximum width was about 45 cm. Note that the felt should be at least this wide.
Mark the width and height of the bottom tier of the tree on paper and draw a freehand line for the bottom edge, then the sides, tapering the tier slightly toward the top. The top edge is straight, with a 2-centimeter allowance so the next tier overlaps without any gaps.
Now mark the width of the second tier, slightly wider than the top edge of the first, with roughly the same height, and draw it just like the first. In this manner, draw all the tiers and, finally, the treetop. The top should be 1.5–2 times taller than the other tiers. I ended up with 7 tiers; whether you have more or fewer depends on the height and width of your tiers.
Once all the pattern pieces are ready, cut them out, arrange the tree, and check that, first, all the ornaments (31 pieces) will fit, and second, that the tree isn't too large—after all, you still need to sew it onto the fabric, add the ornament pockets, and generally find space on the wall for the whole project. If necessary, adjust the pattern in width or height. My finished tree ended up a little over a meter tall.
Stage two: sewing the tree
Overall, I really enjoyed working with felt; it is quite easy to sew, yet looks beautiful and festive.
Before sewing, prepare the backing fabric. The width of the fabric is equal to the width of the tree's bottom edge plus 12-15 cm, and the height equals the height of the tree plus about 80 cm. You can choose neutral colors to your liking; I used bleached linen. Iron the fabric, fold the edges over, and stitch them down. Fold the top edge down by 4 cm and stitch 2 cm from the edge so you can later insert a dowel into the resulting "tunnel" to keep our calendar from curling.
Now assemble the tree on the upper part of the fabric, about 10 cm down from the top. Make sure each upper layer overlaps the lower one, not the other way around. Pin the bottom layer in place (the rest can be set aside for now) and carefully sew along the edge, making sure to leave an 8-centimeter opening unstitched in the middle of the bottom edge for the trunk. Do not sew the top edge of the layer. Now position the second layer, pin it (checking that there are no "gaps" between the "branches"), and sew it down. Continue this way until the entire felt tree is sewn together. Alternate colors as you like. In principle, you can also make it in a single color.
Cut out the trunk, tuck it into the opening left for it, and sew it in place.
Stage three: ornament pockets
In addition to the tree, the advent calendar needs pockets to hold the ornaments. The pockets measure 7.5 cm × 7.5 cm. They should be marked with numbers from 1 to 31. So prepare patterns for numbers 0–9, cut them out, and sew them onto our pockets. Then, after careful layout and marking, pin the pockets to the fabric and stitch them down. While I was sewing these pockets, my daughter learned to recognize two-digit numbers and arrange them in order. A win-win, overall.
31 doesn't divide evenly into rows of pockets, so I made the bottom row with one extra pocket, shifting the whole row to the left to keep it symmetrical. That made a total of 5 rows, with 6 pockets in each of the first four rows and 7 in the bottom row. This is probably the trickiest part of this tree, since the pockets need to look neat and even, and felt tends to stretch, distort, and fall out of alignment. Mine didn't turn out completely perfect, but there was no time left to redo them, so it is what it is—no one complained except me, least of all my child, though I might fix a few things this year.
Stage four, also the last: buttons
Lay out all the buttons across the tree. To ensure the ornaments don't bump into each other on the finished tree, it helps to cut out about 7 paper ornaments (if you don't have finished ones ready by this point) and use them to space the buttons evenly across the entire surface of the tree.
That's it—your gorgeous felt wall Christmas tree is ready. Now it's time to decorate it, and for that we will need felt Christmas ornaments. By the way, you can also decorate a tree like this with small candies by attaching an elastic band to them. In any case, don't put all the treats/ornaments into the pockets all at once, as children are naturally impatient.