Miniature decorated Christmas trees

trees together

Hello! Now that Thanksgiving is over I feel open to Christmas decorating. Almost a month ago I wanted to just sit and crochet without a particular goal in mind, and ended up with this little tree, in sport weight yarn:

first tree

To make it I stitched a cone of sorts using back loops only, stuffed it and added a base, and then went back with a new length of yarn and single crocheted in each unused loop, with 4 chains in between each time. It’s slow, but not difficult.

I started writing a post about making such trees and decorating them, but it was ludicrously large even before photos, so I broke it up. I have for you a four-post series, two posts each today and tomorrow.

1. This post!
2. Making your own trees like the ones above (stitching a cone, closing the bottom, and adding branches).
3. Decorating the blue, silver, and white tree in the top picture (magic chain garland and stars).
4. Decorating the red and gold tree in the top picture (chain garland, ornament balls, and pine cones).

The decorations we’ll discuss are all made with embroidery floss, which is a little more challenging to work with than yarn. Part of this is the size, and good lighting helps a lot with that. The other part is that floss doesn’t give at all – yarn will stretch a little as you stitch with it, which helps you get your hooks in and out. To deal with that, try two things: make sure your loops get all the way up to the largest diameter part of the hook (especially important with steel hooks, which start tapering a lot farther from the end) so they aren’t too small, and turn your hook’s mouth downward when you pull the hook out of a loop. The downward direction has a little more space in most stitches (where for a chain, “down” means toward the previous chain). I used “satin” floss (rayon) for one tree and metallic floss for the other, and notes on working with those kinds of floss in particular are included with the ornament instructions. I have to say, though, that my advice for working with satin floss is DON’T. It is like trying to crochet with well-greased twine.

earring tree

Of course miniature Christmas decorations are also available commercially. The tree above is decorated with earrings (the hook kind); insert them into the tree, as far out or in as you like. Crochet is well suited to making wreaths, as well, either on its own or around a plastic ring.

I can’t close without the piece I promised last time. This is fine yarn (Vanna’s Glamour “Sapphire”, weight class 2) worked with a D/3 hook (3.25mm). The branches took forever, but it’s so chic! I decided to go minimalist and simply use individual strands of metallic embroidery floss as long tinsel. I cut the strands to approximately the right length, erring on the side of “too long,” and wet them so they would lose the kinks from being wound on a cardboard bobbin (at least mostly). Then I separated the strands (almost forgetting my own advice to start by pulling off pairs, because separating a single strand from more than one other strand is difficult) and attached them to the branches, near the cone, with lark’s head knots.

tall blue tree

Royalty

My husband and I had our first anniversary on Saturday (which we celebrated by going to a wedding). My gift to him was a prince and princess stitched in embroidery floss.

royalty - front royalty - back
What happens when you block and then wrap and then don’t re-block.

The patterns were from Kati Galusz, her free Medieval Fantasy: King and a paid Medieval Fantasy: Lady. I changed their clothing color as well as their ranks, and made an extra crown from the King pattern for the Lady’s promotion. The patterns were easy to follow and almost didn’t require any modification to use for embroidery floss, although the lady’s clothing was shorter than it was supposed to be. There’s still something I haven’t figured out about stitch proportions in floss versus yarn, and flat versus round. I added more hair than called for to avoid bald spots, and I had to extend the top of the lady’s arms because they were also too short.

In case you also want to make these out of embroidery floss, here’s the specs:
I used 6mm safety eyes from Suncatcher Eyes, in brown and country blue.
The dolls were a bit over 2.5 inches tall.
He required 1 skein each of DMC 310 (boots), 945 (skin), 435 (hair), and 680 (also hair – I split the floss in half and recombined to get variegation). He required 2 skeins each of DMC 783 (sleeves, pants, embroidery, belt) and 815 (doublet). One skein of E3821/5282 made both crowns easily. She required 1 skein of 898 (hair) and 2 skeins each of 910 (inner part of dress) and 945 (skin). She needed 3 skeins of 3818 (outer part of dress). I did the “skin” option for her legs. If I’d done the “stockings” option I might have been able to get away with one skein of 945, but it would probably have bumped me up to 3 skeins of 910. For the least invasive strand-changing on the lady, stitch her skirt and coat first.

To lengthen the lady’s arms as I did after they were crocheted but not sewn up, take a new length of floss, pull up a loop in the second-from-end of the 6 stitches across the top of the arm (which end doesn’t matter), chain 1, sc in same stitch, dc in each of next 2 stitches, sc in next stitch, and sl st in same st as sc. You’ll have added to the center 4 stitches of the 6.

I took only one progress photo, so here you go.

bald 'n' armless
I title this “bald ‘n’ armless.”