Sewing Stockings

Last December I started knitting stockings for our family.  I finished two of them, then put them aside, because it wasn't Christmas anymore.  I figured that I'd finish the other 2 this year.  February and March and April came and went, and I did nothing with the stockings.  Then May hit and I had to start getting my inventory up for markets.  Then June - September came, and went.  Still nothing happened with the stockings.

Now we are in October - and I'm in my busiest knitting part of the year (for Christmas shows).  I did pull out the stockings, and sadly, decided that they were ugly, I didn't want to knit (now) 3 more of them, and the yarn would be better used for owl hats!

Yikes!

So I went on an etsy prowl for stockings, thinking I could purchase them.  I did find some very beautiful ones.  But at $50 a pop, that comes to $250 for stockings for our family!

Double Yikes!

As this is transpiring, the nutty, creative part of my brain piped up and said - "Nona - you are sewing now.  The stockings you love don't look "that" hard.  Why don't YOU make them?!?!"  :)  And for once, this part of my brain wasn't over stepping, or getting bigger than my ability (although this does often happen).

I popped over to YouTube for some instructional inspiration.  Then off to the fabric store I went to gather supplies.  I came home with some "trial" fabric, and within 2 hours, had whipped out my first stocking!  It was so cute!  And best off all, with the supplies I purchased, I was able to make 4 stockings, not just one with that fabric.

So back to the fabric store I went to get supplies in a few more colors.  And as of this morning, I have finished 8 stockings!  Whoohooo!!!   I'm going to keep working on them this week in the other colors.  I decided that we'll keep one of each color for our family, and then sell the extras.  Hopefully I'll have a nice assortment finished by the 22nd for my next big show.  And hopefully people will want to buy them!

Here are photos of the finished ones.  :)  Tomorrow, I'll post the process.  It's not quite step-by-step, but enough to get the idea of how I made them.

You might be wondering about names/personalization.  At this point I don't have a way to machine embroider them.  Our family isn't going to put names on ours.  That way, every year the kids can pick a different color and no one has to complain that "they always get stuck with the ugly yellow one".  It would be totally possible to hand embroider a name on, but I want to keep the price low, and can't do that if I have to personalize them.

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