The Christmas crafting season has arrived! That means it’s time to dust off your DIY Christmas ornament patterns you never got around to making last year, or find some new ones. How can you resist this adorable felt lightbulb?!
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These little lightbulbs are perfect stocking stuffers or gift toppers. But they’d also be really sweet with names embroidered on the back of them and set out as place cards on a holiday table.
Or you could string a couple dozen of them together on a thin cord to make a garland instead of ornaments. There are so many options for what to do with these DIY Christmas ornaments!
These lightbulbs are really quick to make too, each one should take less than an hour to make start to finish. Making them ideal for last minute teacher gifts. 🙂
DIY Christmas Ornament
Gather Materials
You will need:
Printed Pattern – print at 100% (Get it below)
Coloured Felt – 3″ x 3″ per bulb
Silver Felt – 1″ x 1″ per bulb
Matching embroidery thread
Dark grey and white embroidery thread
Polyfil or wool stuffing
Twine – 8″ length
Sewing needle
Tweezers (for stuffing)
Small embroidery scissors
The wool blend colours pictured below are Silver, Thistle (purple), English Rose (darker pink) and Fern green. The 100% wool colours are Cerulean (blue) and Plie (light pink). All are from my favourite shop to purchase the best quality felt, Benzie Design
The 4 colours I ended up using for the finished lightbulb ornaments are: Thistle, Fern, Cerulean and Fuchsia (wool blend).
I suppose the bulb tops could have been a dark green instead of silver. That would have been more in keeping with what traditional string lights look like. Oh well! Feel free to switch up the colours however you please!
I decided to go with non-traditional Christmas colours and I’m pleased with the results. Plus, red felt is darn hard to photograph. Lol. I really struggled with that when I designed my Christmas ornament pattern sets! Generally I avoid using reds when I know I need to photograph projects.
How to Cut Out Bulbs
Simply pin the paper pattern pieces for the front and back of the lightbulb onto your felt and cut around them.
Use scotch tape to stick the bulb top to the silver felt and cut through both tape and felt simultaneously. Gently peel the paper off the felt.
Embroider Details
Use 2 strands of white thread and a split stitch to embroider the shimmer.
Use 2 strands of dark grey and a backstitch to embroider the eyes and mouth.
I made a different face for each bulb. Each face is very simple and uses a backstitch. But you can see how changing the placement or the angle of the stitches can completely change the expression.
If you need help with the embroidery stitches, a beautiful stitch guide is included with the free pattern download!
How to Sew a Felt Ornament
Layer the front and back pieces and use 2 strands of matching thread and a small blanket stitch to join them, leaving the top open.
Use the tweezers to gently stuff the lightbulb.
Use 2 strands of matching silver thread and a tiny blanket stitch to start joining the screw top to the ornament. Stitch across the bottom of the screw top first, going through both layers of blue felt and pushing the stuffing down into the bulb and out of the way of the stitching.
Loop the 8″ length of twine and knot it. Tuck the knotted end between the silver and blue layers of felt as you continue to blanket stitch around the screw top. Close up.
You can stuff the top if you’d prefer. I opted not to.
That’s it! Pretty simple right?! And yet so adorable!
I think the face on this purple lightbulb is my favourite! The eyes are further apart from each other but closer to the mouth. And the mouth is more flat. But they are the exact same stitches as the pink bulb!
If you’re looking for even more DIY Christmas ornament patterns, check out my donut, ice cream and cupcake patterns. As well as this post of 21 Free Felt Ornament Patterns.
These little felt lightbulb ornaments are the perfect accompaniment for my Christmas ornament pattern set, available in the shop. There are 10 patterns, including the gnome, mushroom, stocking, mitten and tree pictured here.
Here is the sign up box for this DIY Christmas ornament pattern:
Happy crafting!
Hello Laura, I really want to make these adorable felt lightbulbs for a christmas card exchange group, but I don’t see the link to the printable available on this page anymore. I’m hoping you can help me, either point me to a link or email it to me? I’d be very grateful.
Hi Cheryl, If you scroll down to the bottom of the post, you’ll see a sign-up box to get the patterns emailed to you. Happy crafting! 🙂
Hi
I have tried to get the pattern for the felt lightbulbs and so far nothing has arrived. I tried yesterday, so I have given time. I just wondered if there was a problem?
Hi Laura, I emailed you the pattern. Let me know if there’s any more issues! 🙂