Homemade Christmas Stockings

For the past few years, our stockings have made many trips across the Pacific to be with us for Christmas.  Sometimes, when I am unpacking the Christmas boxes, I can't remember if they are here or still on the east coast of the United States.  This year, I decided to make it easy on myself and make new ones for the kids. Since Christmas is about the kids and it's more fun if they have a stocking they love, I decided to let them choose the colors and designs.

I bought all my felt at the 100 yen shop- the kids could care less if they have a Pottery Barn Kids stocking or dollar store, as long as it's their favorite color and design.

I used a stocking I had bought for myself years ago as a pattern and traced it onto the felt and cut out two (if you have a picky kid that asks for stripes, be sure to cut it out frontwards and then flip it for the other one, so that when you sew it together, both sides are facing out):

Take one piece (decide if you want all stockings facing the same direction)- use that piece for the front and start putting on your designs.  For big pieces, I sewed and for small things like ribbon and pom poms, I used a hot glue gun.  Hot gluing should be your very last step, so do the sewing now:

Once your decor is sewed on the front, put it facing the back piece and sew around the edges, leaving the top open.  I used about 3/8" seam.

My kids insisted they had to have white fuzzy stuff on the top of the stocking.  I bought a piece at a fabric store here and cut each strip to be 3 inches high and twice the width of the top of the stocking.  I sewed the white fuzzy fabric together, with right sides facing, then placed it around the top edge of the stocking, with the right side of the fuzzy fabric facing the wrong side of the felt stocking.  At this time, also place the hook inside, I cut a piece of bag strap, folded it in half and put the two raw edges lined up with the edge of the fuzzy fabric and felt.  See below:

Sew around the top edge of the fuzzy fabric and felt.  I went back and forth several times over the hook ends to make sure it would be secure.

Pull the stocking right side out.  Afterwards, flip the white fuzzy fabric over the top, and the hook will pop up:

If you want to be more fancy, sew some ribbon on the bottom outer edge of the fuzzy fabric.  Then you can hot glue gun on the rest of your decor.

For their design, two of the kids wanted Super Mario Brothers.  I cut up some old pieces of fabric.  One of the kids also wanted to use some car flannel fabric that matched his new blanket:

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care:

To go along with this, we read "How To Talk To Santa" by Alec Greven (a 10 year old kid)- it has a nice message about how we all get excited about Christmas, but we should try to be like Santa and be giving to others.