Procrastination Proof Crafts: Two Day Easy Christmas Stockings (and a Spoonflower Velvet review)
Procrastination Proof Crafts is a series focusing on simple seasonal crafts that can be done in one or two days, for all of us who save a ton of holiday craft ideas … and then wait too long to start them.
I have never had a Christmas stocking at one of my adult residences. I had a stocking that lived at my grandmother’s house while she was hosting Christmas (as did all my cousins, aunts, and uncles on that side), and my childhood stocking still lives at my parents’ house. So when we moved into a house that actually had a mantle (not a working fireplace, mind you, but a decorative mantle), I knew I had to make some stockings. And while someday I probably will knit a set of Christmas stockings, I wanted a more instant gratification project than having to wait years while I slowly worked through three knit stockings (because staff kitty Yuna needs one as well, of course).
Luckily Spoonflower had posted on their blog a free and easy to sew stocking pattern. And while the blog post made stockings from their fleece fabric, I decided to splurge and test out Spoonflower’s Celosia Velvet. I was able to use Spoonflower’s Fill-a-Yard to get a half yard of each of the white and navy versions of my Charted Snowflakes design - but velvet’s not a cheap fabric so I did pay 54.00 for that yard. However, I did have enough fabric to easily make three stockings and at $18 a stocking it’s still cheaper than the higher quality stockings at JoAnn’s or West Elm which seem to run at least $25 each. (I also bought my fabric when I could only get the small designer discount – if you can time your purchase to one of Spoonflower’s larger fabric sales you may be able to beat that price). Plus it was fully custom fabric that was exactly the colors and design I wanted, which you can’t always find at a fabric store.
When my order arrived, I was immediately impressed with the clarity of the print on the velvet and the subtle sheen of the velvet texture. ( I do think my chosen fabric design, which features simple geometric shapes and high contrast colors, probably reproduces better on the pile of the velvet than something with a lot of small details or subtle color shifts.) My plan was to make two stockings with blue feet and white cuffs and one with white feet and a blue cuff, so I got to work. I had never sewn with velvet before, and I learned the following tips.
Rotary cutters work great for cutting velvet. I’m still learning to use my rotary cutter effectively, but with a fresh blade and lots of fabric weights, I was really happy with the way the rotary cutter cut out the pattern pieces, and it was a lot easier to keep my edges smooth than with scissors..
Pin everything. Since you’re putting the right sides of the fabric against each other to sew, the fuzzy pile does want to shift a lot, so you’re going to need ample pins. I found it worked best to alternate the sides as I was pinning – for example I’d pin the very top of the right side, then the very top of the left side, than the right side about an inch down and the left side about an inch down, and so on. It seemed to help me keep the edges of the piece even.
Clean your sewing machine periodically! Velvet fabric creates a TON of little fuzzies that drift into the sewing machine mechanism as you sew. I started blasting my machine with compressed air after each stocking to keep it clear.
An example of pinning the stocking pieces by alternating between the left (top of the photo) and right (bottom of the photo) edges. Here there are two pins in each side and I’m about to put the third pin in the left (top) edge.
I made two modifications to Spoonflower’s directions. The first was that instead of the scrap sateen fabric they used to make the hanging loop for each stocking, I cut a small rectangle of the velvet and hemmed the long sides together to make a tube and then sewed that in as per the pattern directions.
Turning the hanging loop right side out after sewing the long edge together.
The second is that, since I was using velvet instead of fleece for my stockings, I needed to do something to finish my seams and the hems of the cuff to prevent fraying (fleece won’t fray so you don’t need to do that with a fleece stocking). For the interior seams I used my pinking shears to cut along the edge of the seam allowance (left photo below), and for the cuffs, I found it easiest to hand sew a hem using the blind hem stitch.(center photo below)
Once I had finished the stockings I decided to add an additional customization by cutting our initials out of felt and sewing them to the cuff (right photo above). And then we were done!
This project took me only a weekend to do, largely because my personal preference for sewing projects is to cut everything on one day and then start sewing the next day – I could have done it in one (long) day if I really needed to. It’s definitely a project simple enough for beginning sewists. If you didn’t plan to ever put anything in the stockings, you could probably even sew them by hand with a straight stitch fairly quickly (maybe not in a weekend, though). And of course if you use fleece as Spoonflower’s pattern intended, you don’t have to finish your seams.
I do think using the same patterned fabric in different colorways instead of a solid fabric for the cuff or two really different fabrics makes these feel like a store-bought set even though I made them myself. Blue and gold are my personal favorite for Christmas decorations, but I do have two contrasting colorways in the Charted Snowflake fabric in green, white, and red, if you’re interested in a more traditional colorway.
Have you ever made your own Christmas stockings? What type of fabric did you choose?