Crafting for Christmas (Part One): Stocking Up

After Master Aidan was born in 2005, I kind of knew he was going to be the caboose of the family, so to speak. When I was little, I always said I was going to have 10 children when I grew up. I’d still love to have those 10 kids in theory, but in practice, maybe not. Two kiddies, two parents. We try to keep an even playing field around here.

So anyway, we had little Aidan that July and I really wanted to make stockings for Christmas that year. Wasn’t really sure how at first. I just knew that ideally I wanted them to look somewhat vintage and I wanted to like them enough to keep using them until the kids are grown — in the hopes that one day they’ll be reminders of happy childhood Christmases and their mom’s limited sewing skills. (Read my soapbox about that topic in the previous post.)

Before I give you the 411 about crafting these stockings, let me just insert an opinion here: Applique and zigzag stitching is the greatest thing ever! I decided to sketch out my own patterns to applique and had a lot of fun mixing different fabrics. I used antique white felt for the stocking itself and lined it with green gingham. (Gingham is the other greatest thing ever.) I embellished each one with buttons and frills and big jingle bells at the toes for good measure.

Now the ‘monogramming’ was tricky. I don’t monogram, so I had to figure out a way to monogram without monogramming — hence, the tricky part. I found some small gold wire ribbon that I twisted into names and handstitched them in place with clear thread. Pretty smart, eh? (It took me forever to figure something out that would work. Don’t give me too much credit.)

Here’s some close-ups of the results…