Happy Handmade Christmas (stockings)

A very happy Christmas to all my blog readers!  As yesterday was the first day of my holiday, Pete and I had a lovely relaxing day at home, generally putting our feet up before the Christmas rush.  I took the opportunity to do a bit of sewing, which was really nice.

For the first year, we've decided to do Christmas stockings for each other - I thought it would be nice to get this little tradition into play before baby comes along next year!  I've seen a few stockings about, but as my mantra often is these days, why buy it when I can make it myself!?

This free stocking template from Love Sewing magazine came in very handy.  It was intended for a Scandinavian paper piecing stocking, but I definitely didn't have time for that malarky today, and it was a great template for my needs as well.

I used A4 pieces of felt for the body of the stocking.  Obviously, I wanted the stockings to be bigger than one A4 piece of felt (assuming that my hubby has been out buying me lots of pressies!), so each stocking piece was made of 2 pieces of felt, which I attached with some lovely red spotty bias binding which I had lying about.  I thought the green, red and white was a lovely festive combination.

To differentiate between them, it seemed like the best idea was to put our initials on the stockings - I managed a slightly wonky R and P done in white, just to complete the effect!

Looking forward to waking up to these full on Christmas morning - I suppose I'd better get my wrapping finished or 'P' might be a bit disappointed...!

Happy Christmas, and every blessing for the New Year!