if the shoe fits

...or sock...
and it's more like if the sock DOESN'T fit....

I made our (my Beau & mine) Christmas stockings 14 yeas ago...
and I guess the style back then was ugly...
or something close to that!

I've hated our stockings for about 10 years now...
not sure I ever really loved them...
but full on HATED for quite awhile!

this is how attached we were to our stockings...we couldn't even remember from year to year who's was who's...I think we settled on mine being the lighter one and his the darker...but I'm not sure it that was the original assignment!

anyways...off to the fabric store...
and I found some fabric that I LOVED...

oh, so pretty!...just a little Christmas decorating tip...don't get stuck in the Christmas fabric section...
rather than the ol' snowman/Christmas tree/Santa/candy canes/reindeer
decide what color scheme you want and look for fabric in those colors....
I wanted to stick with the green theme because of the tree skirt I made last year...
but also wanted it to not be too green....
I also like texture and corduroy is a favorite of mine...so I found our pattern fabric first and then off to the corduroy to match up colors...
I didn't end up using the polka-dots...might make a table runner with it...we'll see.

I traced our old stockings

adding more curve to the heel because it felt too straight

cut them out...
measured for the cuff

sketched out the toe and heel

printed off initials for them (so we can remember which one belongs to who (or is it whom?)

the 'B' is Lucinda Calligraphy and the 'K' is Victorian LET 

cut them out

and then cut the heel, toe and initial out of the contrasting fabric

you will need 2 toe's and 2 heels,
(make sure to label them and draw an arrow for the top of them because they are both slightly football'esq shapes and look a lot alike once they're cut out!)
only one initial is needed unless you want one on both sides
and make sure to cut the initial out backwards (well, if you're cutting out on the wrong side of the fabric!)

the stripe fabric on mine is leftover from our tree skirt last year
the pattern fabric on Beau's is also on our tree skirt but I had to buy more

cut it all out...

sew them all together...

which I'm not quite done with yet...

I like our stockings to have a little more body to them 

so I wanted to line them and have them padded.

and I didn't have material for the lining...

so off to the store for more fabric 

and then I will finish them up today...

I'll update this post when I have them all done....

...to be continued!

AND
Done!

and because I'm not a real seamstress...
I just play one on my blog
I can in no way walk you through getting from

this 

 

to this

I can tell you there was some seam ripping/frustration/under the breath mutterings that all happened but I'm not sure that is needed to get to the final product...