Creative Ways to Repurpose Linen Fabric into Christmas Decorations

No matter where in the world you may be, if you celebrate Christmas, this is probably the time when you secretly begin stressing out over gifts, decorations, dinner plans, and so on.

The promises you’ve made to your inner aesthete to make everything look creative, polished, and unique are probably weighing down on you. And your budget. That’s why we decided to go DIY and showcase how you can create a truly beautiful and unique Christmas decor by simply upcycling stuff that is laying around the house.

Our main tools involved kraft paper, which can be easily substituted by baking parchment paper, lots of linen fabric scraps - cut up old sheets if you have some or use any other fabric instead - linen yarn, coconut buttons, and some natural materials that we literally just brought in from outside.

Gift wrapping

This year, we were very inspired by the traditional Japanese wrapping cloth called furoshiki, and how it is used to wrap all kinds of goods, from books to bottles to forming comfortable carry bags. Furoshiki is eco-conscious, creative, and even faster than paper wrapping.

Although furoshiki is a certain type of cloth, you can substitute it with old scarves, sheets, handkerchiefs, and other scraps of fabric. We had some white linen fabric laying around and decided to match it with a simple brown linen, then decorated with small branches of pine tree and rowan.

Tree ornaments

The next challenge was DIY-ing tree ornaments. We wanted to maintain the earthy color palette so we dug up some fabric scraps in white and natural linen colors and set out to make three types of Christmas tree ornaments: a bauble, a ribbon, and a ribbon-decorated pine cone.

With just a little bit of glue and wire, we were able to achieve amazing results. The linen fabric, when torn, formed a lovely fringe on the side making the ornaments look very intricate.

At the end of the day, the tree looked modest yet elegant, and the team had spent quality time together decorating it. If you don’t want to splurge on expensive Christmas tree ornaments, this can be a mindful and fun family activity that you can easily repeat every year.

Candle holder

One last thing on our Christmas DIY list was a candle holder made from actual wooden branches. We used old dried out branches and hot glued them to a couple of white pillar candles, then wrapped a piece of linen fabric and a linen yarn around it.

For those worrying that it’s a fire hazard - the branches have very little possibility of flaring up unless tipped over. To prevent any kind of mishap and create an even more nature-inspired look, we placed them in a bed of fresh moss. It looked absolutely magical!

To sum up, we encourage you to take a more mindful approach to Christmas this year. Mindfulness teaches us to bring awareness to our actions and feelings, which is especially useful around the time of holidays that tend to force overconsumption on us.