Welcome to the 'Sewing a Plushie Christmas Tree' tutorial series! In this guide, we’ll show you how to cut and sew a cozy, stuffed Christmas tree tailored to your chosen size.
How does it work? Well, to make things simple, we’ve included a calculator to determine the exact dimensions for your pattern pieces. You’ll draw them directly on your fabric, and follow our step-by-step instructions to bring your tree to life.
In this first part of the series, we’ll gather the materials (or creative substitutes) you’ll need, calculate the pattern dimensions of each piece, and arrange everything for cutting. Let’s get started!"
Overview
The Plushie Christmas Tree consists of a fabric cone topped with a star. For easy washing, it's designed with an inner cushion and a removable outer cover, featuring a zipper at the bottom. Feel free to omit the cover if you don’t need this feature, or don’t want to be bothered with it!
The default size used in this tutorial is 34" (86 cm) tall, suitable for standing on the floor. For more ideas, check out our Pinterest inspo board!
Working backwards from this design, here are the fabric and materials needed —
Materials & Sourcing
If you already have a piece of fabric in mind, you can jump directly to the calculator to see your finished Tree size, plus the amounts needed for other materials.
(Possibly green) minky or fleece for the cover
For the cover, a 60" x 50" (152cm x 127cm) piece of minky or fleece is recommended, as this is a common throw blanket size available in department stores for approximately $10 (USD, in my area, and at my time of writing).
Lightweight or midweight woven fabric for the cushion
Dimensions are the same with the cover. If 60" (152cm) wide woven fabric is not available (pretty rare for wovens!), just piece together two 45" (114cm) wide fabrics along the selvage. Since the cushion is concealed, it's an excellent opportunity to use ugly scrap fabrics from your stash, and/or or piece out from separate fabrics.
Fusible interfacing/fleece or quilt-able batting
This is intentionally a very wide range of choices — they’re going to be applied to the bottom of the cone to stiffen the tree. I’ll leave it to your judgement on how stiff you want your Tree to be. Our default size for this is a 23" (58cm) circle.
(Possibly yellow/gold) knit or woven fabric for the star
Our default size is 20" x 10" (50cm x 25cm). Being knit or woven doesn’t matter at this size, so feel free to dig into your scraps as well.
Zipper
We’ll need a durable zipper:
- long enough to cover the diameter of the Bottom, plus a little extra 3/8"(1cm) on each end — on our default size, it’s roughly 2 feet (60cm).
- Wide enough to stitch the cover fabric far away from the zipper teeth, to prevent the zipper from catching in the fabric’s fluff. Usually this isn’t a problem, but keep this in mind anyways.
- A continuous zipper tape or jacket zipper is ideal for the default size. For other sizes, adjust accordingly — but promise me you’ll dig into your stash before heading to the store, okay?
Stuffing
There are choices here too.
Polyester filling. The standard stuffing is those white, fluffy, polyester fibers for sale in a store — the most common brand names on my market (US) is Poly-fil and Fiber Fill. They’re easy to stuff evenly and feels good (only from the outside), but they’re, you know, plastic.
For the default size, approximately 6lb (2.7kg) of polyester filling provides a balance between sturdiness and pliability. Additionally, consider incorporating:
Fabric scraps. What is more satisfying than getting rid of unused fabrics by using them in a meaningful and creative way? Just throw in anything you can think of — old socks with giant holes, worn-out towels and pillow covers, fabric scraps of the weirdest shape from other projects, and what’s left of the cover fabric from this project as well.
Cut fabric scraps into pieces: place heavier woven fabrics in the center (larger pieces are acceptable), and near the outer surface, use knits and fluffy fabrics cut into small 3/4" (2cm) squares or triangles. Pack smoothly to avoid lumps.
So yeah, you can see this method is mentally and environmentally satisfying, but takes a bit longer to execute.
(Optional) weights
If you prefer the tree weighted, you can add them to the bottom of the cushion. As a substitute for plastic bead/pallets, some natural choices are dried beans/rice wrapped in a packet, and little stone pebbles from the beach/riverbed.
(Optional) hand embroidery needle and floss to emoji-fy the star
An obvious substitute would be another other type of needle and thread within reach.
(Optional) a scrap piece of embroidery stabilizer or fusible interfacing
Just a 1x3" (2.5 × 7.5cm) rectangle.
A universal/microtex needle for the cushion (and/or star), and a ball point or stretch needle for the cover (and/or star)
Your preferred tools for measuring, cutting, marking, basting, sewing, and hand embroidery
Lay Plan
You will have three pieces — the Side (shared between the cushion and the cover), the Bottom (just for the cushion), and the Half-Bottom (just for the cover). Here’s what they look like on the fabric:
To maximize the size of the tree, the pattern layout along the width dimension is very tight. In fact, a fabric width of 60" will NOT fit if your store-bought fabric is 58", or even 59". This is when you tweak the numbers in the calculator!
In terms of layout, you generally need to respect the grainline (for the cushion) and the direction of greatest stretch (for the cover), to ensure pieces behave as intended during sewing and afterward. For example. attaching the zipper would be a nightmare if the straight edge of the Half Bottom were prone to stretching.
There are exceptions to the grainline rule. The Bottom piece is one, as it’s a circle and behaves the same regardless of how it’s cut. Another exception is the Side piece for the cover, in case your throw blanket has the greatest stretch along the shorter dimension:
Pattern Pieces
Alright, it's time to get measurements using the Plushie Christmas Tree Calculator. Play around with the numbers until they fit both your fabric and your vision!
With these measurements, you’re ready draw your pattern pieces directly onto your fabric. All the directions below yield pattern pieces with 3/8"(1cm) seam allowance included, except for the straight edge of the Half Bottom, which matches the zipper’s seam allowance..
And there you have it—your Plushie Christmas Tree is taking shape! With the pattern pieces ready, the next step is bringing it all together, starting with the Cushion. Get your sewing supplies prepped, and stay tuned for the Part 2 of this tutorial, where we’ll guide you through every stitch to make your Tree come to life!
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