Stockings

I have conquered another semester of nursing school. My final was 10 days ago and I've already forgotten everything. (Not really. I hope not.) 

Since then, I've been working my third and last Christmas season at a local bakery where we sell baked goods and make gift baskets with fresh bread and muffins. Very early mornings, long days, and sometimes even going back in the evenings to prepare for the next day. Brutal schedule, but somehow so much less stressful than school.

So I haven't had much time to sew. As always, my Christmas to-do list was long and almost none of it has happened. Oh well. But I did get an idea in my head to make each of my friend's kids a stocking.

I barely had any time, and had so much else I wanted to accomplish, but I just couldn't get it out of my head. So I gladly caved and went digging in my scraps and stash.

I'm so glad I did because this project was so much fun!

I was guided by these two tutorials, but tweaked each stocking a bit to suit my skill and taste. For example, this one has a cuff that encircles the top of the stocking, but I found it difficult to sew on without it bunching up due to cutting or seam allowance inaccuracies. I need lots of room for error!

So for this one, I simply made the cuff on the front only and you can't tell the difference at all.

And I felt like this one didn't need a cuff because of the Christmas tree.

I love how each one is constructed differently in some way.

The pink one has no batting or quilting, and the one with owls has hand-quilting.

When they were finished, I took my boys to the dollar store and we filled them up with goodies for our little friends, who received them with such adorable excitement.

Time definitely well-spent! And now I've narrowed down my handmade Christmas gift list to one quilt - but it is a huge quilt and I'm barely half done. So yeah, I'd better get on that.