Christmas in October, Part 2

After finishing our new Christmas tree skirt and getting all of the fabric cut for the stockings, I kind of stalled out on finishing them, turning to a few other projects instead.

But this week, I told myself they had to be finished before I could start anything new, and since I was dying to make myself a 241 Tote, I finally got the stockings done.

I used the same fabrics as the tree skirt, Robert Kaufman's O Tinsel Tree collection in the Winter palette (purchased from Hawthorne Threads). I love whites and blues instead of the standard red and green Christmas palette, and the modern yet classic look of this line really appealed to me.

I had to do some very creative cutting to make the fabric I had work for these. When I bought the fabric, I just kind of guessed on how much I'd need for the skirt and stockings, and I was just barely able to make it work.

I decided to do patchwork for the front of the stockings based on the parts of the pattern I used. Each stocking uses the same five fabrics laid out in a slightly different order, with the exception of the cuffs, which all use the Tinsel in Frost fabric, my favorite from the collection.

I used this tutorial from Fabricworm, which I also used last year to make B's temporary stocking. It's well written and easy, especially if you just used a solid piece of fabric for the front and back sections.

I decided to just use a solid piece for the back of the stockings, which you'll rarely see anyway. I used the tinsel fabric for my and Matt's stockings and the Snowflake Dots in Winter for B's stocking.

I lined each of the stockings with the same fleece I used to back the tree skirt. Because the fleece was so thick, I decided to leave out the batting, but if I was making these again, I would probably sub out the fleece and batting for something thinner, like flannel or felt. The fleece turned out to be very bulky, especially around the cuff area.

I'm still debating on whether to add our names or initials to the body or cuffs. Part of me doesn't really care whether we each have our "own" stocking, so the names seem superfluous, but I did like the way B's initial looked on his temporary stocking, so I can't decide. Thoughts?

I still love this little snowman.

I can't wait to see these guys lined up on the fireplace in just a month or so. How is it almost November already??