Painted Ornaments
DIY Christmas Stockings
I had an image in my head of what I wanted our stockings last year, and I couldn't find them anywhere. I wanted a set, with the same patterns and colors, but mismatched - and it had to be in the 3 sizes. No wonder I couldn't find them anywhere! Needless to say, at Thanksgiving this year I got a bit bored...and decided to start sketching our 'forever' stockings - and Chuck liked 'em so much that he took me to JoAnn designs that night to buy the fabric for them on our way home. The fact that all their fabric was 30% off was simply a sign that it was meant to be ;-). We found 5 fabrics that we liked - 3 cottons, and two taffetas. One cotton was cream and had gold glitter Christmas stars throughout, and the other was a burgundy with a white damask/candy cane design. Of the two taffeta,s one was a solid burgundy, and the other was a burgundy with a gold beaded scroll design. And the 3rd cotton, the one for the inside lining, was a burgendy/white/olive green striped fabric. Matching, without being too perfect. The two larger stockings templates came from a dollar store stocking and one of ours from last year, and I free-formed the smallest one. I used the directions from this video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS7miiwdvFA&feature=related as a guideline, and added a ridiculous amount of trim I picked up from JoAnns and 'borrowed' from my mothers sewing collection. Thanks, mom ;-). In my opinion, the most tedious part of the project was attaching the fusible webbing to the fabric. Complete and total pain, and almost makes me not want to make stockings for our kids when we adopt 'em. We'll see if I remember what a pain it was when we come to that.
I didn't want t sew our names onto them, because I figured once we had kids I wanted them to be able to personalize their stocking with their own name tags every year, and it would give us a chance to change 'em up. This year, I found gift tags in the dollar section at Target - little plastic ornaments that were bright pink and green. Nothing a bit of primer and gold paint couldn't spruce up, and painted our names on those, attaching them from the corner of each stocking.
We couldn't be any happier with how they turned out. Chucks stocking is white pom-poms, mine is beads and pears, Justices is jingle bells, Mulders is lace and roses (yea, I know - not very masculine), and the penguins is stripes of each of the 4 fabrics with gold lace. Not sure how we are going to make the stockings for our kids, yet - we made sure to buy plenty of fabric, and we'll cross that bridge later.
I didn't want t sew our names onto them, because I figured once we had kids I wanted them to be able to personalize their stocking with their own name tags every year, and it would give us a chance to change 'em up. This year, I found gift tags in the dollar section at Target - little plastic ornaments that were bright pink and green. Nothing a bit of primer and gold paint couldn't spruce up, and painted our names on those, attaching them from the corner of each stocking.
We couldn't be any happier with how they turned out. Chucks stocking is white pom-poms, mine is beads and pears, Justices is jingle bells, Mulders is lace and roses (yea, I know - not very masculine), and the penguins is stripes of each of the 4 fabrics with gold lace. Not sure how we are going to make the stockings for our kids, yet - we made sure to buy plenty of fabric, and we'll cross that bridge later.
