Last week was ca-ray-zee – so much so it warranted me misspelling that word so badly lol. Term 4 of school started with a bang and, after a quiet holidays, it was a wee bit of a shock to my system. I love that my three are active and all play sport but it makes for full on weeks as a result. Add in food poisoning, a school fete to prepare 30m of bunting and cupcakes for and a wedding and I think I did more running than anything. We survived though of course and this week is lovely and about as settled as our family can be.
I have been doing some lovely slow stitching in my down time which is in no way relevant to this post but lets be honest – its pretty! The full reveal will be on Sunday night as part of a blog tour so stay tuned!
Now the reason we are here – my Christmas stocking pattern.
To be honest I wasn’t even planning on releasing my stocking as a pattern this year but a few requests for it in my Facebook group made me decide to get it written and published. A fantastic group of testers who I will introduce shortly helped me to get it finalised and pretty in record time and it hit my store last Sunday night. So the blog post is a bit late but all that means is I get to look at all my pretty pics again lol.
A bit about the stocking: It is fat quarter friendly, beginner friendly and, importantly for this time of the year, a lovely quick sew. You can make it as fancy or as simple as you like with trims, different fabrics and, as I will show you in a bit it is even really easy to enlarge for a super stocking!
When I was making my samples I thought it would be a great idea to have a play with some different fabrics to see what adjustments, if any, needed to be made. With small tweaks it was really simple to make gorgeous stockings from ruffled knit, Essex linen and velvet. It was exciting to realise at that moment just how versatile this pattern is!
It was nerve wracking handing the pattern to testers. When you make so many of something it is hard to break your steps down with beginners in mind so I really had to think my process through slowly. I am really proud to say though that they ALL nailed it the clever possums. I had a huge mix of ability in my group which I think is really important and to be honest there was little difference between the finished products in the end. Most importantly though these gorgeous women went above and beyond for me in terms of promotion and sharing. You have all seen the stockings I made over the years so instead let me show you theirs.
Stockings made and photographed by the amazing Michelle Lafranchi
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