My Inspiration behind the Bargello Embroidered Christmas Tree Decorations

I always think it's lovely when you see people create their Christmas decorations that they then display in their homes.

I have fond memories as a child creating those Christmas paper chains that would then be hung up in my home.

I've always loved the Scandinavian homemade designs and have often admired some lovely decorations on display in some of my Swedish friends home around Christmas time.

You may already know that I'm also a keen hand knitter and several years ago, I was really excited when knitwear designers Arne & Carlos released a book called 55 Christmas Balls to Knit. I knew that I immediately wanted to create some knitted ball balls for my Christmas Tree that year.

Also in that same year, my friend Joost had set up a company called Timba Tree where he made these gorgeous wooden trees.

I thought that style tree would be a fun change to the normal Christmas Tree.

The wooden tree was in a stacked timber format and had beautiful wooden pegs to hang Christmas decorations from.

I therefore spent a fun few weeks back then, knitting a few fun festive patterns from this book.

Here is a photo of the tree at the time with the knitted ball balls I made:

Fast forward to 2021 and I knew I just had to create some more fun Christmas Tree decorations but with Bargello Embroidery instead!

I knew I wanted to give them that groovy 60s/70s vibe so 'traditional' Christmas Colours was never going to happen (haha!).

I also knew I wanted the Bargello pattern to be fairly simple without any compensation stitches so they would make a great beginner bargello project for anybody wanting to try out this fun style of embroidery.

Once I had decided on the colour scheme (which obviously involved some pink and orange!), I worked out a design using the Bargello-a-GoGo Embroidery Journal to see how it would work on the Graph Paper before actually committing to stitching the design onto canvas.

Here is a photo of my original design thoughts and graph paper sketches along with the two finished designs.

I decided for the kits to have four of these decorations in the two colour ways. They are made using the British Made Appletons Tapestry Wool.

Now I've finished showing them off at the Christmas Craft Fairs for the year, I'm looking forward to finally hanging them up on my tree at home this Christmas.

It's been really lovely to see how many people have loved these Christmas Tree Decorations designs and I would like to thank everyone who has purchased one of these fun kits so far.

You can still purchase these kits in my shop and there is also a step by step video tutorial on how to make these decorations on my Tutorial Page.