Christmas ornaments have become one of the most beloved parts of holiday decorating, but stitching them by hand has a longer and more interesting history than many people realize. Long before shops offered packaged sets of glass balls and glittering decorations, families made their own ornaments using fabric, thread, beads, ribbon, and whatever small treasures they had on hand. These early handmade pieces often carried family stories and reflected the styles, materials, and values of their time.
For stitchers today, understanding the history of embroidered ornaments adds meaning to the tradition. It shows how our modern projects connect to generations of needleworkers who made their homes festive with whatever their needles could create. Let’s take a look at how stitched Christmas ornaments evolved from the Victorian era into the early twentieth century.
Victorian Beginnings: Luxury, Craft, and Symbolism
When people think about handmade Christmas ornaments today, it’s easy to imagine that stitchers have been making them for centuries. In truth, the tradition is much younger than many assume. Before the Victorian era, Christmas needlework certainly existed, but it looked very different, and it rarely appeared in the form of little stitched objects hung on a tree.
The real turning point arrived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the Christmas tree began appearing in German homes. Even then, it remained a regional custom for some time. The moment that transformed everything came later, when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who was from Germany, placed a decorated tree in Windsor Castle. Their influence was enormous. When the royal family was shown gathered around their tree in an 1848 illustration published in the Illustrated London News, the custom immediately spread across Britain and then North America. Once the English-speaking world saw their Christmas tree pictured in newspapers and magazines, the practice spread rapidly, and families everywhere began decorating trees of their own.
This is the moment stitched ornaments were born. Suddenly there was a new place in the home inviting small, meaningful decorations. Women started making padded shapes, silk-embroidered hearts, tiny beaded pieces, and other stitched treasures to hang on the branches. Earlier forms of Christmas needlework had been functional or devotional. Now needlework could be purely celebratory, made for joy rather than utility.
So while some needlework connected to Christmas certainly existed long before the Victorian era, the tradition of stitching ornaments belongs to that later moment in history, when the Christmas tree entered everyday family life and invited stitchers to fill it with their imagination.
Common Victorian Materials
The Victorian era (roughly 1837 to 1901) marked the moment when decorated Christmas trees became popular in many homes, thanks in part to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. As the tree spread from royal portraiture into everyday family life, so did the desire to embellish it.
For Victorian needleworkers, Christmas ornaments offered an ideal canvas for creativity. Many ornaments were soft, stitched items made with materials considered decorative and luxurious at the time. Common Victorian ornament materials included: silk fabric, and silk threads; fine wool felt; velvet scraps; metal-thread embroidery; glass beads; sequins; narrow ribbon; and lace trims.
Ornaments often took the form of hearts, stars, padded shapes, tiny sachets, or miniature pillows. Some were embroidered with initials or family monograms, while others featured floral sprays, birds, or scroll motifs typical of Victorian design.
Because handmade ornaments reflected personal taste, no two trees ever looked alike. Wealthier households might display elaborate silk ornaments with gold thread, while modest homes repurposed scraps of fabric or ribbon into simple but charming decorations. Even the humblest ornament carried the pride of its maker.
Silk and Bead Ornaments: A Victorian Specialty
One of the most distinctive ornament styles of this period was the silk-and-bead ornament. These small treasures combined embroidery with the sparkle of early glass beads. The beads were typically couched onto silk using fine thread, forming patterns such as stars, wreaths, initials, crosses, and small geometric designs.
The goal wasn’t quantity, but beauty. A Victorian stitcher might spend hours embellishing a single padded shape, knowing it would be brought out every year and admired by candlelight. Because many families still used candles on their trees, the reflective shine of beads made these ornaments appear almost magical.
Though fragile, some examples have survived in museums and family collections, offering glimpses into the patience and skill of nineteenth-century needleworkers.
The Rise of Crazy Quilting and Its Influence
Crazy quilting became a major trend in the late nineteenth century, and its influence quickly spread to Christmas ornaments. Small crazy-quilt ornaments combined:
• irregular silk and velvet pieces
• decorative seams worked in feather stitch, herringbone, or chain stitch
• silk ribbon motifs
• small charms or buttons
Because crazy quilting encouraged variety and embellishment, no two ornaments looked alike. Many stitchers used leftover scraps from larger projects to create colorful, visually rich decorations that felt playful but still elegant.
This is also the period when handmade ornaments became meaningful little gifts. A stitched ornament required very little material but plenty of care, making it an affordable and personal present exchanged among friends, teachers, or neighbors.
Turn of the Century: Practical Embroidery Meets Christmas
By the early twentieth century, styles began to change. While Victorian ornament-making favored richness and curated abundance, the early 1900s brought a shift toward simpler design, cleaner lines, and practical embroidery.
Publications such as Ladies’ Home Journal, The Delineator, and various needlework magazines began printing holiday patterns for readers. These patterns used stitches many women already knew like the stem and satin stitches, the outline stitch, buttonhole stitch, and of course cross stitch on plain or even weave fabric, as well as couching with metallic threads. Ornaments created in this period were often:
• felt circles or stars embroidered with simple motifs
• little padded hearts edged in blanket stitch
• cross-stitched images mounted on board or card
• embroidered sachets filled with cloves or lavender
• tiny banners or hanging panels with short holiday messages
Because more homes began to use electricity, ornaments were designed to reflect the brightness of early electric lights rather than candlelight. Beads and metallic threads remained popular, but they were used with more restraint than in earlier decades.
The Influence of Cross Stitch Charts
Although counted cross stitch existed earlier, the early twentieth century saw the rise of commercially printed charts. These patterns offered clean, repeatable designs that were easier to share. This led to an increase in small seasonal cross stitch motifs such as stars, holly sprigs, bells, angels, miniature nativity scenes, snowflakes, and alphabets for monograms on hankies.
Stitchers could now follow printed charts to create ornaments that looked polished but required little time. Many motifs were intentionally small so they could be completed in a day or two.
This was the beginning of the ornament tradition many of us recognize today. Makers stitched small squares or circles, added braid or ribbon, and hung them on the tree—just as modern stitchers still do.
Handmade Ornaments as Family Keepsakes
By the mid-twentieth century, stitched ornaments had firmly become part of family Christmas traditions. Some households made a new one each year, marking the growth of children or celebrating a new home or important event. Others passed their stitched ornaments down through generations.
The charm of a handmade ornament lies not just in its appearance, but in its memory. Each piece represents the year it was made, the hands that created it, and the quiet moments spent stitching for someone else.
Even today, many stitchers say that small ornaments give them a sense of connection, either to their own family history or to the long line of needleworkers who made Christmas beautiful with thread and imagination.
Today's Stitchers Carry the Tradition Forward
Today’s ornament makers enjoy a wider range of materials than ever before. You can of course use linens or a fabric specifically made for counted cross stitch called Aida. All these materials could be hand-dyed and made of various different fabrics. You can now use silk threads plain or overdyed, metallics, charms, beads, buttons, specialty stitches, and more. Yet the spirit is the same as it ever was.
Just like their Victorian predecessors, modern stitchers appreciate:
• the joy of small, beautiful projects that are fun and easy to do
• the pleasure of embellishment which is reflected in our holiday decor
• the meaning of handmade gifts to share in the spirit of the season
• the satisfaction of stitching something that will return every December
Christmas ornaments offer a perfect balance of creativity and practicality. They allow stitchers to explore color, texture, and style without the commitment of a large sampler, and they quickly become treasured pieces in holiday celebrations.
Written by Thea Dueck: designer, teacher and founder of the Victoria Sampler. A professional needlework designer and a recognized authority in specialty stitches. She loves sharing the joy of samplers and specialty stitches.