After almost 20 years, I finally decided to make Christmas stockings for my whole family. Not that my children did not have stockings for the past 19 years. I designed and quilted three large "sacks" that featured appliqued images of Santa the first year my oldest daughter was born. I made one for my daughter, one for my husband and one for me. By the time my next child was born, almost 6 years later, my husband and I decided to stop buying presents for each other and my handmade stocking/sack became my youngest daughter's stocking. I never displayed our stocking as part of our Christmas decor ... they only came out the night before Christmas along with the special plate and mug that we used for Santa's treats.
A couple of weeks ago, after seeing so many magazines and blogs with stockings hung on fireplaces, I could not resist the urge to have stocking that I could use just for Christmas decorating. So I bought four plain burlap stocking from Creative Bag. I already had the lace ribbon and wood letters. I picked up the four beaded snowflakes from Creative Bag ... I think they were the last four and I was so happy they had four left because I had my eye on them for a while but just didn't know what I would do with them.
Here's what I did:
1. Gather your supplies - burlap stocking, lace ribbon, ornaments, wood or metal letters, baker's twine, thread in colour to match the stocking and a needle.
2. I sewed two rows of lace ribbon to the cuff on my stocking. You add as much or little lace as you want ... there is no right or wrong way to do it.
3. Embellish each stock to personalize. I used wood letters stained brown for each of our family members. First I sewed the beaded snowflake ornament to the stocking. Note that I sewed the ornament with the hanging element facing downward so I could attach the wooden letter to it with the baker's twine.
Here's another close up of one of the stockings. Santa will not be filling these stockings. Ever. They are just for me.
This is the project that inspired me to make my family Christmas stockings. I originally purchased one burlap stocking to use for a baby gift. One of our friends' daughter was expecting her first child early December and I thought that it would be cute to package the baby's gift in a stocking. Since we didn't know if it was a girl or a boy when I was giving the gift, I left the burlap stocking plain and just added a gift tag and spoon ornament that I made for the baby's first Christmas.
The spoon was a vintage silver baby spoon. I hammered it flat and engraved the numbers "2013" using metal stamps and a hammer. The bird charm is a metal scrapbooking piece that I have had for a few years and I tied a vintage green velvet ribbon to the handle. My wonderful hubby help me by drilling the hole so I could add a jump ring and piece of twine for hanging.
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