Creating Seasonal Needlepoint Trees

If you stitch needlepoint and like small projects, you’ll find yourself with lots of stitched projects and you probably want to display them.

That’s the problem. Houses only have space for a limited number of pillows, you can give stitched accessories to friends and family, but you run out of them. What’s an industrious stitcher to do?

I like the idea of seasonal trees. These trees get updated several times a year with ornaments suitable to the season: hearts for St. Valentine’s Day, eggs for Easter, patriotic for July, etc. And in seasons where you don’t have a collection of ornaments, you can group ornaments around a theme, for example, snowflakes for winter. How often you change the ornaments is up to you.

The key to displaying these ornaments is to pick a tree that is not tied to a particular holiday. My tree is a metal one I got from Needle Nook of La Jolla. Because it’s a dull gold, it will work for any season. Other possibilities are dowel trees, below top, and German feather trees, below bottom.

You can make a dowel tree easily yourself. There are lots of tutorials online. Feather trees are much more complex and should be bought. All these trees have in common an open structure that allows the ornaments to take center stage. You also want to be careful about size. Unless you have a place to keep a tall tree up all year plan on a tabletop tree, less than 3 feet tall.

Once you have your tree, collect your finished ornaments. Gather them all together and divide them into groups of similar themes. This gives you an idea of what you have. Do you have groups for one or more holidays? Those are possibilities? Do you have groups for specific seasons? These can be an alternative to holiday-theme trees or can fit in between the holidays? Do you have ornaments that have another theme? I have a ton of Tish Indian ladies and other Southwest designs. For me, a seasonal tree could showcase these ornaments.

Once you have identified the groups, figure out wheer there are gaps. This is where you will want to buy new canvases or create your own projects.

With a seasonal tree, you’ll have a lovely and changing display for your needlepoint.