Christmas Stocking Fun

In October our quilt guild had a program on using old denim blue jeans to make Christmas stockings.  They were so cute and looked easy to make so I decided to make them for our whole family and hang them on our fireplace this Christmas.  This first one is the one I made for John...guess it was the prototype for all the rest.

I didn't use the pattern that we were given as I wanted my stockings a little larger so I just drew it a little larger.  We have lots of worn out denim blue jeans so had the fabric needed for the base of the stockings.

This post will be the first part of  tutorial on how I made them, the next part two on how to make the stocking and then follow up posts will be some of the tips and tricks I learned as I was making them.

The front side of the stocking is cut from the top of the jeans using the waistband for the very top.  I varied where I placed my pattern to make all the stockings look different.

 

I laid the pattern on one side of the jeans where I thought it would work the best.  Since the jeans are not flat pieces of fabric I flipped the jeans over to make sure the pattern would fit as shown in the photo below.

 Trace around the pattern on the one side of the blue jeans and cut that first part out so you can open it up and lay it flat to finish the tracing and cutting.

Here is one stocking front base...next  is to decorate it.

 The toe and heel patterns I traced on a fusible paper backed web and fused to the selected fabric.  As you can see from the photo below I selected certain spots for the toe and heel from this particular fabric.  Cut out the shapes and peel the backing off and fuse to the toe and heel of the denim base.

I stitched on the inside of each fused shape with a buttonhole stitch on my sewing machine.  I did flip it over and trimmed the edges of the fused fabric even with the denim.

Well that is all for this post...next one will be part 2.

Until later,
Lynn