This is the stocking I made for my niece Molly, who was born just this year in January.  The stockings in my family have a bit of a story.  My grandmother, who had the same name as me, made a stocking for each grandchild and great-grandchild as they came along.  My son’s was the last one she made.  So a year later, when my sister-in-law joined our family, I made a stocking for her, so she would have one on my parent’s mantle.  And since then, I’ve made one for every new family member – including Dan.  Molly is our latest.

The stocking is a Bucilla kit – one that I picked up as a lot from a website in a huge after Christmas sale.  This kit was a bit simpler than some of the ones that I’ve made – being that it only is made up of 38 pieces of felt.  Usually there are about 80 or so pieces.  I enjoy doing these sorts of crafts – because there is such a variety of things to do.  Bead and sequin work, applique, and embroidery.  I have to say with this stocking – I think I finally got the technique of the embroidery of the name right – every other one I’ve done looks a bit wonky.

One thing that I always worry about with these types of projects are whether the materials that come with the kit will last for the whole project.  I always find that the beads that hold the sequins on usually have a pretty high percentage of faulty ones – and one year, I bought a whole tube of clear seed beads just in case I ran out.  What I’ve been doing  is saving the materials from projects once I finish them, just in case something is wonky with the kit.  What happened this time is that I got to TWO red sequins before I was finished with them, before I had to open the red seed beads.  And I almost didn’t have enough white embroidery floss.  The icing stitching of the gingerbread was supposed to be two strands of embroidery floss, but I used four instead.  So when I got to the white stitching that pus the stocking together – I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough.  That was the first time with one of these kits that I didn’t have at least one piece of floss left in a particular color.

The window on the left is a bit helter skelter – I’m not sure what happened when I appliqued that piece.   Because of the dangling Y, I couldn’t center the name, which bugs me just a bit.  But on the whole, I’m pleased with how it came out.  One of the wonderful things about these projects is the 3-D quality to it.  You can’t see it in the picture, but the various pieces are stuffed, and the effect is quite striking.  While I’m sure  Molly – being just shy of a year old – won’t know what to make of it – I really hope her parents love it.

And so – this starts off the Christmas Crazyness of 2009.  I still need to find some sort of handmade ornament to make, and the cookie baking will commence soon.

*Photo taken with the iPhone and the native camera