Making a Christmas felted floral centrepiece

I always like to make something each year to add to our Christmas decorations. Last year I made ‘Mr Scrooge’ who was a great addition to our household….

I’ll pop a link at the end of the post to this, but you can also find other Christmas projects by clicking the heading ‘Christmas Sewing’ on the journal home page.

A Scandinavian Christmas is always my go to idea of how to decorate our home at this festive time. We lived for 3 years in Stockholm and the sight of tiny candles glimmering through frosted windows, will always stay with me. Everything was beautifully decorated there without any hint of the garish, cheap and nasty plastic junk that pops up in the shops here. Silver candles and golden stars with natural wreaths and handmade decorations in felt, paper and wood, were what I took away from our time in Scandinavia and this year, I went all out to solve a problem with this rather special centrepiece candle holder. This beautiful floral silver candelabra was bought in Stockhom, quite a few years ago. If you know me at all, you will understand that despite the price, there was absolutely no chance at all of it being left in the shop!

Made by Rosendahl of Copenhagen in their ‘Karen Blixen’ Christmas range, it was definitely coming home with me. Somehow though, it always seemed rather lost plonked on a table or a tray and was completely lacking in cohesion with the Christmas table. I bought the white star plate a couple of years ago with the idea that it would be a good base for it, but again something was still missing. This year I resolved to sort it out and so I did.

A cheap wire wreath circlet from our local market was the starting point and knowing that I was going to add fabric to it and that it would be a stand for a ceramic plate, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to bind the inner hoop with cotton tape, rather like an embroidery hoop.

This would give me a base for ease of stitching on the ‘planned’ leaves and the outer ring should provide a resting point to hold them in place.
For the colour scheme, I turned to my two much loved pieces of Emma Bridgewater pottery with the hawthorne pattern on. As they are always out over winter in the kitchen, it seemed the right idea.

So using grey, ivory and dark green felt, I began to cut leaf shapes out and embroider some of them with very simple stitches. I did use some iron on interfacing on the the lightweight felt and this helped when the weight of the perle cotton thread was stitched in easy motifs. A sparse sprinkling of tiny sequins and seed beads really added to the project.

As I lay them on the ring and placed the ceramic plate over the top, I could see instantly that this was going to work quite well. I layered the leaves quite heavily, securing them to each with tiny stitches in matching thread and then just a whip stitch around the bound ring.

Once the tiny little red pom poms were added for the berries, the whole thing just melded together and came to life so easily. With the candles lit, the sequins and metallic thread gleamed and it all looks so pretty it was so worth the effort.

I do love Christmas and now finally I can add a bit of Danish style to our supper table every evening. I have to say it looks pretty spectacular on our black granite kitchen island and is cheery and cosy on these bitter cold days we are having at the moment. Better get a stock of candles in…

I hope you are enjoying putting up your decorations and preparing for Christmas. It’s just the best time…. See you soon, Ruby x

Useful links:

Rosendahl have a range of Karen Blixen Christmas decorations here

Emma Bridgewater is here with a range of tree and hedgerow themed pottery.

Making Mr Scrooge is here