Of course when I saw this giveaway I had to link. I love all of Samantha’s dress patterns, I just wish my girls liked wearing dresses more. I had so much fun being a pattern tester for the Miss Alice dress a little while back. I’m hoping to get another project that I’ve been working on posted tomorrow.
Did you like this stocking? Want to make one yourself? Well, I figured there are probably a lot of tutorials on how to make Christmas stockings, this one is the way I did it. I like that it allows room for embroidering the name, what’s a stocking without a name on it?
Here’s what you need:
Ready?
Cut 2 pieces of the stocking pattern from the white muslin
Cut 2 pieces of the main fabric from the stocking template
Cut 2 pieces from the linen for your name placket (cuff piece)
{Sew with 1/4 seam allowances throughout.}
Place white muslin (for interior) right sides together and sew along edge, leaving ‘top’ of stocking open. Set aside.
Take main fabric and sew your 2″ wide fabric together, then sew linen to that 2″ wide fabric. Repeat for back side of stocking. Press seam allowances down towards main colored fabric.
After sewing both front and back exterior pieces of the stocking it’s a good idea to embroider your ‘names’ on the stocking. Just use your water soluble pen and write the name however you’d like, then use a satin stitch to embroider the name. (this is definitely the most time consuming step). At this time I also did a little bit of hand quilting to keep the top pieces attached to the batting better.
Next, place a piece of batting on your work surface, then put the pieced exterior right side up on top of that. Then place the other pieced exterior piece right side down and then place the remaining batting on top of that. Pin. Sew along edge, again leaving ‘top’ of stocking open.
Turn exterior pieced fabric with batting attached right side out. Slip the white muslin liner into the stocking, wrong sides facing together. Attach your binding to the top of the stocking, just like you would for making a quilt. I tried hand sewing the binding for the first time. I love it. I used this tutorial and just looked at the pics for how to tack the binding down. If you haven’t done it this way before give it a try!
Lastly, take a 8″ scrap of ribbon make a loop and attach to stocking by sewing on a button through all layers.
Now go hang that stocking by the chimney with care!
All the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicolas soon might be there. Blah, blah, you know the rest. I’ve got my first Christmas stocking completed! The embroidery was a killer for me. Although I did manage to almost finish all of it in one sitting while I was at a craft show. It was kind of fun to sit there are sew by hand. I made some similar stockings a few years ago for my brother and his wife, very fun.
I should have named my kids Jo or Sam or something on that order. Have you ever read the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes? Well Natalie is a pretty long name, almost as long as Chrysanthemum. It’s a good book to by the way if you haven’t read it already. Anyway, the jist of the story is that all the kids make fun of Chrysanthemum because her name is so long. A short name is quite nice when you’re embroidering it on a Christmas stocking. Maybe I’ll take that under consideration for the future…
Of course I have to mention that Natalie’s name is kind of special in regards to Christmas (no, sorry she wasn’t born on Christmas or even close). The name Natalie “is of Latin origin, and its meaning is “birthday”. Refers to the birthday of Christ, or Christmas”. [according to thinkbabynames.com] Pretty cool, no wonder the first song she sang was Happy Birthday to You.
I think we’re going to take a trip down Christmas stocking lane in my next post. I’ll get busy and round up some pictures of Christmas stockings of the past, this’ll be funny. Oh, I almost forgot, I’ll post a tutorial on this by the end of the week as well!