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These knit I-cord Christmas tree ornaments are made with simple knit cord, which you can knit by hand or machine. Either way they’re really fast to make and a cute addition to your tree or to use as bag or package decorations.
Supplies
Each of my knit I-cord Christmas tree ornaments is slightly different in size because of how I assembled them, but you’ll need about 13 to 15 yards of worsted weight yarn or 10 to 12 yards of sport weight yarn, or a similar amount of whatever yarn weight you want to use.
The small green one is Brown Sheep Nature Spun worsted in Elf Green. The darker green with the clay beads is something random from my stash and the lighter green with the pony beads is DROPS Alpaca Mix in color 7238. Use any green yarn you have handy.
You’ll need a couple of double pointed knitting needles in a corresponding size for the yarn you are working with, or a short circular knitting needle. I used size 7 US/4.5 mm. Or if you want to use an I-cord maker, you’ll need that. Check out all the ways you can make knit cord.
You can make your tree simple like my dark green one or embellish it with beads, in which case you will need beads. The copper beads are homemade air dry clay beads (you can see them in this post about preventing cracks in air dry clay) while the others are mostly transparent pony beads, with one solid brown bead to be the trunk of the tree.
To sew up the trees you’ll need a small pair of scissors and a sewing needle.
Sizes
The size of your knit I-cord Christmas tree will vary depending on how long you make the cord, what embellishments you add and how you fold it.
The little green one is a little more than 2 inches/5 cm wide at the base and about 2.5 inches/6.35 cm tall. The one with the clay beads is almost 3 inches/7.62 cm at the base and 3.5 inches/almost 9 cm tall including the beads.
And the light green one is about 4 inches/10 cm wide at the base and 4.5 inches/11.4 cm tall. It’s completely coincidental that they all ended up half an inch taller than they are wide, but I guess that’s the proportion that looks pleasing to my eye without even measuring it.
Making Knit I-cord Christmas Tree Ornaments
To make your knit I-cord Christmas trees, you’ll first need some I-cord. I cast on 5 stitches for the ones I made by hand; the I-cord maker makes a cord that’s 4 stitches.
Mine range from about 15 inches/38 cm to 30 inches/76 cm. You can measure yours as you go or, if you have an idea for how big you want your tree to be, just lay it out on the table as you knit and stop when it’s big enough.
Bind off and leave a long tail for sewing.
As mentioned above, you have a lot of options for how to finish your knit Christmas tree ornaments.
This one is just folded up on itself and sewn up the middle. Make sure each layer is slightly shorter (or longer, depending on which direction you’re going) than the one before to give it a tree shape.
The second one I made includes air dry clay beads painted with copper ink. I placed a bead between every other fold, with the beads getting smaller as I went up. Of course there’s one at the top for the star.
I stitched it together from bottom to top, then ran the yarn through the center again, then sewed along the open edge to give a little more stability.
That’s totally optional but I like the look.
Finally with my machine made cord I made the biggest knit I-cord Christmas tree ornament of all. This one I started from the top with a yellow bead, then randomly selected beads to go between each layer as I sewed through. At the bottom I added a brown bead to be the trunk. Again I sewed all the way down, turned and stitched all the way back up going through each bead again.
Hide the yarn ends inside the cord and trim any excess yarn.
If your knit I-cord ornament has a bead at the top you can use that to add your ornament hook, or just hook it onto a stitch of the cord at the top of the tree.
I hope you’re try these super cute knit I-cord Christmas tree ornaments. You can make them in no time and embellish them in lots of different ways.
