Welcome to my very first blog post! Thanks for stopping by!

In the spirit of the holidays, I decided to go with a holiday stocking. This personalized stocking would make a perfect gift, especially when filled with other yummy and fun goodies. This could easily be finished in about 4-5 hours, depending on how comfortable you are with a sewing machine and embroidery.  The gray wool I found at  Joann’s Fabrics had so much texture and depth, so I chose to use that as my main piece and have the traditional red and green as a nice pop of color. Feel free to get creative! I have my eye on whipping up some blush pink stockings in the future.

Here goes nothing!

Wool + Felt Stocking DIY

Estimated Time: 4-5 hours

Items needed:

• 1/2 yard of wool felt, color of your choice
• 1/8 yard red felt, 1/8 yard of green felt
• gold embroidery floss, red and green embroidery floss to blend with felt (I used DMC 3777 and DMC 469)
• embroidery needle
• fabric pen
• sewing thread to match wool felt
• 6 inch piece of ribbon
• sewing machine, fabric scissors, sewing pins
• paper to trace stocking pattern – I free-handed a stocking based on images online and then added about 1/4″ seam allowance around border

1. Before starting, gather materials.
2. Trace stocking, stocking cuff, and leaves on any type of paper. When tracing the cuff piece, I would make it the same lengthwise as the upper portion of your stocking.
3. Fold larger wool felt piece in half. Line up the cuff with the folded edge, then pin stocking and cuff tracings as seen in photo
4. Cut out 2 pieces of the stocking and 1 of the cuff
5. Do the same with the leaves – cut out as many as desired for your finished stocking
6. Now time to sew! If there are right and wrong sides to your felt, pin pieces with right sides facing each other and sew around border with a 1/4″ seam allowance, leaving the upper portion of the stocking open
7. Flip stocking with right sides facing out
8. Fold your 6″ piece of ribbon and pin within the opening of the stocking. Sew to secure ribbon about an inch away from opening.
   

   

   

   
9. Take your wool cuff and pin edges to each other – sew with 1/4″ seam allowance
10. Next we will attach the cuff to the main body of the stocking – Flip the stocking inside out. With the main stocking piece wrong sides out, pin the cuff around the body with the right side of the cuff felt facing the wrong sides of main body felt. Match seams. Sew around opening with 1/4″ seam allowance, making sure that piece of ribbon is flipped down and doesn’t get sandwiched in the felt while you’re sewing
    • Tip: if your cuff is a lot larger than the stocking, I would recommend sewing a larger cuff seam allowance so that you get a nice cuff that sits flush with the body of the stocking. I had to redo this part ~7 times to get it right, have a seamripper at the ready
11. Flip stocking right side out and fold cuff over your stocking.
12. Draw whatever you’d like to embroider on a piece of scrap paper to practice. Skip this step if you like taking risks.
13. Trace this with fabric pen onto wool felt.
    

    
14. Embroider only through the upper layer of fabric using the gold thread. I used a backstitch throughout, but use whatever embroidery method you feel comfortable with! I didn’t use an embroidery hoop due to the heavy weight of the felt.
15. Arrange felt leaves and attach with corresponding thread.
16. At this point, I cut several small circles of red felt and layered over the leaves. Attach with red thread.
    

    

    

    
17. Admire your finished work! Optional finishing touch: take Instagram cousin to Target to use her fancy new phone camera to take pretty pics of your stocking!!!

Enjoy! If you have any questions, comments, or feedback – leave me a line!