Crochet Christmas Tree + Tutorial

Crochet Christmas Topiary Tree

This cute Crochet Christmas Topiary Tree stands 13.5″ tall, tree top not included in height. The base diameter is nearly 10″. This is a super great gift for the elderly stuck in long term care facilities, someone at the office would like a home made Christmas tree on their desk without taking much space and for anyone who would like an artistic, homemade crochet Christmas tree for display.

This tree takes approximately 3.5 hours to crochet. The decorating of the tree you see in the photograph took me about 1.5 hours as I was strategic about hot glue gunning my felted balls and silver jewelry beads into place. I opted to not do yarn that resembled tinsel as I found it covered up a lot of my stitch work. I figured I spent 3.5 hours crocheting this, I want my stitch work to be visible and part of the obvious creativity to this little tree.

Tree Top Tip: The Tree Top is a polymer clay decoration. I simply glued a thin dowel to the back of the decoration, then slipped the dowel down through the top of the crochet project and inserted it into the Styrofoam so it stayed standing up. On a personal note: Diva Dan prefers the tree without any tree top. I like it either way.

I’ve been teaching How To Read Crochet Patterns lately. I felt it appropriate to create some pattern diagrams to help encourage people to understand how to read the diagrams as well.

Pattern Notes:

I found this project to be in three different steps.

Create the foundation of the Christmas Tree. Spiraling from Top to Bottom.
Create branches of the Christmas Tree from Bottom to Top, spiraling back up.
Decorate to suit you.

Materials Needed:

Size J or 6.0 MM Crochet Hook
2 Balls of Green – Caron Simply Soft Party – Spring Sparkle Green 100 g, 3.5 oz
Substitute the yarn for any brands you prefer to make your tree customized to fit your personality.

DC = Double Crochet, Ch, SL ST = Slip Stitch, BEG = Beginning, SC = Single Crochet, V Stitch 2 DC into same Stitch,

Create Your Foundation First:

Ch 4, SL ST to the BEG Ch to form ring.
Ch 2, 16 DC around the ring, do not SL ST at the end.
Immediately DC 2 Times (V Stitch) into the first DC from the previous round. This creates the start of the spiraling effect. DC into the next 7 stitches, Next stitch DC twice (V Stitch) into the same stitch. DC remaining stitches around.
To continue the spiraling effect and growing your tree into a cone, you will go over the V Stitch in the previous round, on the 2nd DC of the V Stitch, Place another V Stitch to continue the cone widening growth. Do this for every V Stitch you crochet over.
Continue to crochet in a never ending spiral until you get the height you want. The height is determined by a Styrofoam Cone or whatever height you have in mind. You don’t need to count your revolutions.
When you have your desired height, fasten off and weave in your ends.

Crochet Diagram Showing Stitches

Red Lines indicate where I am showing you to immediately crochet without slip stitching. This will make one continuous row from the top of the tree all the way to the bottom of the tree.

Creating Your Branches

The picture to the right is showing you how I want you to look at your project. You will need to turn your project inside out to get this look. If right handed, the bottom of the spiral must start at the bottom and go left. For left handers, your spiral will go right.

Fasten on yarn on the side of the first post. CH 3.
Immediately DC 4 times on the same post. The way we are grabbing each post to DC onto is referred to as FPDC (Front Post Double Crochet). Ch 1, then FPDC 5 Times immediately on the next post directly beside it.
*Skip 3 posts and on the 4th Post, 5 FPDC, Ch1 and 5 FPDC on the next post and repeat from * all the way to the top of the tree.

The diagram below the way the foundation looks before adding your branches. Essentially we are going to add the Crocodile Stitch to the existing posts and work our way back to the top of the tree.

The diagram below is what the branches will do to the existing foundation. The bottoms of the crocodile scales face down, it is much easier to crochet the stitches from the bottom to top of tree for easier access to the posts. Because we have worked down in a continuous spiral, this means the end of the row is at the top of the tree. We continue to work on the row (crocheting left if you are right handed or moving right if you are left handed).

Finish the final scale at the top of the tree when you have run out of posts to crochet.
Simply fasten off at the end on the final 5th FPDC stitch. This will allow the scale to stand up on one side to form a perfect top.

Decorate Your Tree

I used felted balls by Handbehg Felts. There are two different sizes of balls to make it appear more random.
I also used silver jewelry beads to simulate Christmas balls.
I used a hot glue gun to fasten the balls into place onto the tree.
I had yarn that simulated tinsel but found it hid my stitchwork too much for me to like it. That’s up to you. You can just take yarn and chain it into a large strand and wrap around your tree.

Enjoy your new tree.

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Crochet Christmas Tree + Tutorial