Stitched Christmas Trees with Year 10

I only had a single lesson (35 minutes) with Year 10 today so I chose to make one of my simplest cards with them. They all did very well with several completing the stitched Christmas tree on gold or silver card, mounting it on black paper before gluing it onto a white card and embellishing with a holographic star. I don’t have any photos of the actual cards but they are based on the following design, which is one of my own…

I produced a powerpoint to talk them through making the stitched tree so I thought I’d also share the instructions on here for anyone that’s interested. I originally made the template by drawing a triangle and measuring equally spaced holes on each side with the left hand side holes sitting in the middle of those on the right hand side. To place the trunk in the correct place I constructed an angle bisector to be as accurate as possible but measuring would be fine for anyone that’s not an over enthusiastic Maths teacher!

This triangle has significantly less holes than the ones that Year 10 completed today but there are enough to understand the general principle and get the hang of the pattern.
	Starting in the bottom left hand hole ensures that the pattern is as easy as possible to follow so cellotape your thread to the back of the card and stitch as shown here. Out on the right, in on the left.
Now come back out on the left hand side one hole up and stitch back to the original hole on the right hand side. This is the pattern that you follow for the whole design, on the back you move up one hole on the same side and on the front you stitch across to the hole that you’ve already used.
	Once you’ve reached the top you can go back to the bottom and stitch the final two parts to make the trunk. So simple but also incredibly effective I think.

They seemed to enjoy the activity, many of them stayed well into break to finish it. One noted that this was like a “knit & natter” session, they really are old before their time! I also had a request to do the string art with them later in the year, which I blogged about in the summer when I did it with my current Year 11s. I really do love spreading my enthusiasm for crafting!