Christmas Stocking Project

I’ve had a particular stocking design on my mind for quite some time.  I have this secret love of the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  I especially love the swirled stockings that all the Whovilles have hanging on their chimneys.

So I’ve been thinking of a design for my own Whoville stocking.  The problem was most stockings, unless they are very large, don’t hold very many presents.  I wanted my stocking to be both cool looking and have practical purpose when Santa comes around at Christmas time.

To make the stocking fit more stuff, I created it with three pieces rather than the customary 2.  There is a triangular shaped piece along the back that acts as a sort of spine for the stocking.  If you wanted to fit more or less presents, all you have to do is modify the size of the triangle.

The body of the stocking was heavily quilted with dense stippling, or meandering lines.  On the top, I left space for a drawn letter “L” (my initial) and then went back and traced over it.  The result is a very nice trapunto like monogram.

Binding this sucker is going to take awhile.  I machine stitched the bias binding on, but the rest will have to be done by hand.  This is one project that can look great if you take your time, or look like crap if you rush it.

Overall I think this will make a terrific pattern for intermediate quilters.  I’ll see about having the template shrunk down and then digitalized so that I can made a PDF version available on my website.  This may be the start of a whole series of Christmas patterns, who knows!