Christmas Stockings To Share ...

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I've been having a hard time getting into the spirit of Christmas this year, as someone very near and dear to my heart, my beloved Aunt Bea, is very ill, and it pains me that I cannot be with her right now.

But ... I think I am finally starting to get that Happy Holiday Feeling!

Some magic must have happened last night, or a Pixie came into my house and sprinkled Angel Dust on my head while I was sleeping, because today . . .

I just feel like Christmas itself!!! Isn't that just so special!?

Anywayz, I just thought I would share our family Christmas Stockings with all of you out there.

December of 2002 was our first, official Canadian Winter, away from the 27C temperatures of Christmas in Phoenix, Arizona. Come to find out, this was the worst Winter Haliburton had seen in the past 35 years!

Figures, eh? The year we move from the dry, balmy climate of Phoenix, to the humid, bone-chilling temperatures of -40C in Haliburton, our first Winter back in Canada; can you get more extreme than that? Nope. I don't think so.
I thought it would be nice to celebrate our being safe, back home in Canada, away from the threat of terrorism & War in the United States, by making new Stockings for the whole family.

While doing a little Christmas shopping in town, I thought it would be nice to have Stockings for the kids with their names on them, so I thought I'd see how much it would be to buy them, and then just embellish the their names on the front with gold or silver glitter glue.
I picked up one of the beautifully appliqued Stockings that were piled high on a display table, thinking that when I turned over the price tag, it would cost about 10 bucks. NOT!

I was floored to discover that (although wonderfully embellished, detailed with beads, jewels and gold thread) each Stocking cost from $19.99 to $24.99 each! Knowing these lovely Stockings would totally blow my Christmas Budget, I decided right there on the spot that I would make my own Christmas Stockings this year! After all, it's what I did for a living ... make pretty, embroidered and embellished lovely things of all sorts, shapes and sizes.

Even if it meant staying awake, sewing at my machines until Santa came and went ... everyone would have their own Christmas Stocking that Christmas!

Business at "The Stitchery" was booming by the time Christmas came around, and my workload had literally doubled over night, when the townsfolk discovered that I had the ability to embroider anything I could create on my computer screen.
My Business Card from
'The Stitchery'

As with every festive Season that comes upon a Seamstress, people were coming out of the woodwork to have the names of their loved ones embroidered on items of every kind. Whatever surface my customers could find to have a name embroidered on, I embroidered on it.

Everything from Jackets, Shirts, Back-packs, Hats, Scarves, Baby Blankets, and Tote-All's, right down to a Family Heirloom 100% Cotton Throw, which had been turned into a Named Heart Keepsake Wall-Hanging, with all their Grand children's names embroidered on it!
Back to my story ... I lucked out and found one Stocking that was reduced as it was last year's stock, marked down to $6.99, but there was ONLY ONE. But, since I was making the Stockings myself, all I needed was one - as an example, and at least I now had a patten to cut the rest of the Stockings from. Knowing I had plenty of colourful, sparkly, festive fabric at home with which to make a great many Stockings, I took my one 'Stocking' home, and began to create.


My Embroidery machine is also my Sewing machine, so I decided to embroider all of the names on the Stockings, like an assembly line, before I'd assembled them so that once I had finished embroidering all the names, I could switch my machine back over to the sewing machine, and assemble all of the Stockings at once, without having to switch back and forth between the two machine functions. Certainly did save some time.
 I started with the kids' Christmas Stockings, because if I didn't get all of the Stockings finished before Santa arrived, at least the kids would have theirs' hanging for Santa to fill Christmas morning.

There was a great deal more applique work on the kids' Stockings than I had counted on, after I'd completed the first Stocking.
There was all of the outlining of the Holly leaves and Holly berries, with gold metallic embroidery thread, two leaves on the foot of the Stocking, and 3 leaves on the Stocking topper, embellishing them, and appliqueing all around the edge of each leaf, sort of in a way to join the two pieces together, to enhance the top of the Stocking and to hide the seam as well. I had also used a piece of flat, gold ribbon to divide the white felt from the burgundy Velour of the bottom piece of the Stocking.I used burgundy, cotton Velour for the front of the Stocking, and almost the same colour of doubled cotton flannel. I made sure to wash all of my fabrics to ensure that in the event they had to be laundered (for some unforseen reason in the future) they would not shrink and twist out of shape. I used white felt, embellished with gold sparkle dots in a grid pattern, for the top of the Stocking, finishing off the top of each Stocking with winter-white, polar fleece, to give the illusion of snow sitting on top of the Stocking.


Although I tried to make the Stockings as uniform as I could, each is just a little different in some way, so each Stocking is 'an Original' work of art, made my Mummy/Aunt Cathy. I hope our daughters, and my niece and nephew, will keep and cherish these Christmas Stockings, and hang them up in their homes, when they're older and have children of their own.
I decided to stitch our names in white because the names stitched in red (see Stocking at Right), just didn't give it enough of a contrast. I thought the white stitching would pick up the white from the top, and show off the bright red of the Poinsettias. Next, I used a band of winter-white polar fleece to finish the tops, and to make it look like there was snow on top of the Stocking.
It just seemed the perfect thing to finish off the top with. I also made the loop with which to hang the Stocking from the polar fleece, as it was quite durable and strong.

I cut each of the Poinsettias petals from bright red felt, then I appliqued them on using a solid red rayon embroidery thread line, all around the outer edges of each petal. I then used metallic gold embroidery thread to make and embellish the veins of each petal, and make the sepals as well. I found some festive cording (that I have no idea where it came from), to divide the white stocking topper, from the green sock body, covering the seam that joined the two pieces of fabric together.