Dimensions Cardinal Christmas Stocking - DONE!

Do you remember my post ooooooh about a year ago? Here it is to refresh your memory. I had wanted to finish this stocking for Christmas last year and it just did not happen! Christmas is crazy enough without added projects, buying presents, bake-a-thons and family, so it just did not get done. And no, nobody laughed at me! I will have you know that I was able to finish it this year! Look!!

I don’t want to be prideful, but I kind of do!

Isn’t it beautiful?? That’s a year of hard work, cramped fingers, and strained eyes. I am very happy with how it turned out considering it’s my first one and I didn’t have a sewing machine to sew the fabric. I’d like to do a simple tutorial on how I did this because I had a difficult time finding a photo/video tutorial on how to do this without a sewing machine and how to add an extra layer of fabric to protect my stitches.

Before detailing

This is my project before the detailing and before I stitched my name on the top. I wanted to show this because I used…duct tape on the edges. Yup. I started this project while on a road trip to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming and had nothing else to secure the edges with (I didn’t want to use the thread the project came with)! The duct tape actually held up extremely well, it moved with my project as I used hoops to make the fabric taunt. When it was time to take it off it started unraveling the aida cloth and leaving behind a sticky mess! So I just chopped that off.

Almost finished!

Here it is! Detailed, outlined, and blocked. I washed it in a just a few drops of Dawn dishsoap and cold water, then I rinsed it real well. Then I pinned it down onto a towel and let it air dry overnight.

Adding the fabric

The photo above was when I was working through trial and error figuring out how to sew the silly thing together. What made it a little tricky was figuring out how to add the fabric to protect the back part of my stitching so presents couldn’t snag anything but still face outward so the inner part of the stocking looked good. When I sewed these two together and turned it right-side out I realized I had just made the stocking as the fabric you see in the photo turned to be the pocket, not the liner. There was nothing to protect the stitching! A trick? Buy plenty of extra fabric. I did not want to tear out the fabric I had just attached so I experimented quite a bit by pinning and turning the stocking right-side out to see how it looked. FINALLY I got it and it looks like this!

Yippee!

I got it! All I needed to do was fold down the top part of the stocking and basically hem that top portion. I don’t know why I didn’t get a photo of the inside of the stocking, but there is fabric that faces outward and lines the backing to my stitching and then there’s the second section of fabric facing outward that is the pocket. Don’t forget to iron it with something on top of your work to protect your stitching!

I apologize for the lighting in this photo!

I love this fabric!

I am so glad to be done and I was starting to get super antsy as I was finishing this, I was so ready for it to be done! Now what should I do next? Knit or stitch?? So many choices, so little time…

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