Christmas stocking
Nov. 2nd, 2025 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merrileemakesI used to despise Christmas. Just utterly detest it. My Family of Origin are dysfunctional, self-interested assholes with no insight into how awful they are. But every Christmas my mother insisted we LARP as a caring family unit because Family is Christmas or something. The hyprocrisy was the worst part though. We barely spoke to each other but on Christmas we had to spend the whole day Being Pleasant and pretending Everything is Fine.
I've slowly gotten better with Christmas after I started ignoring my family for Christmas, and then extending that to every other holiday, and then every other day. So I'm now at a place where I can consider Christmas with something other than nauseating dread.
Which is a long and convoluted way to introduce the fact that I've been embroidering a Christmas stocking.
I've been working on this embroidery kit for a neighbour, whose dogs we used to walk before she moved away.
The kit was pretty basic, just lots of shapes printed on acrylic felt to be cut out, embellished with plastic sequins and stitched together. I felt the kit was needlessly fussy, most of the shapes where double sided even if you stitched them down onto the stocking. I also ran out of one colour of sequins which was not great.
Oh, and then my cat Jasmine decided to 'help'.
Okay, I'm apparently pretty cranky. Maybe I'm not as okay with Christmas as I thought.
Anyway, here's a little snippet of making a single fairy light, with a stocking reveal at the end.
Here's some of the fairy lights printed on the felt. Each light has a front (with the dots marking where the sequins goes) and a back.
Each sequins is stitched on and held with a bead. You bring your needle up through the hole in the sequin, through the bead and then back through the hole in the sequin to secure. I don't think, up to this point in my life, I've ever referred to a single sequin before. It's kinda like datum.
The instructions said to cut out the shapes and then embellish but I chose to do it the other way around, because it's easier to hold a larger piece of felt. Here's the front of the fairy light all sequins up and the back of the light.
Here's the light all stitched together! Most of the shapes on the stocking were stuffed so they had polyfil between the 2 pieces of felt, but the lights were mercifully stuffing free.
Next up is the light cap. Here's a whole bunch of them.
Cut out the light cap, fold it in half around the top of the fairy light, stitch around the outside to secure it closed and to the light.
And yup, even the tiny light cap gets embellished with a sequin and bead.
Repeat that last step 7 more times. And also don't loose any of these suckers because they are tiny and totally edible according to the closest feline.
Once you've finished a fairy light stitch it down on a cord of black thread you made earlier.
Repeat a bunch more times.
Hey, you have a stocking!
I think my favourite is the pug. That face is just too cute. I do like the jumper on the brown dog though.
Actually, they're all pretty cute.
I didn't keep track of how long the stocking took me but one of the Amazon reviews says it was about 60 hours for them and that sounds about right. This kit was surprisingly fun and easy. And the kit is so intensely tacky it's almost endearing. I'm almost tempted to do another one, like the cats in ugly Christmas sweaters ornaments (and that's the name of the kit I'm not even being judgemental here) or the coastal Christmas tree, which is barely hideous at all and actually well suited to an Australian Christmas.
I've slowly gotten better with Christmas after I started ignoring my family for Christmas, and then extending that to every other holiday, and then every other day. So I'm now at a place where I can consider Christmas with something other than nauseating dread.
Which is a long and convoluted way to introduce the fact that I've been embroidering a Christmas stocking.
I've been working on this embroidery kit for a neighbour, whose dogs we used to walk before she moved away.
The kit was pretty basic, just lots of shapes printed on acrylic felt to be cut out, embellished with plastic sequins and stitched together. I felt the kit was needlessly fussy, most of the shapes where double sided even if you stitched them down onto the stocking. I also ran out of one colour of sequins which was not great.
Oh, and then my cat Jasmine decided to 'help'.
Okay, I'm apparently pretty cranky. Maybe I'm not as okay with Christmas as I thought.
Anyway, here's a little snippet of making a single fairy light, with a stocking reveal at the end.
Here's some of the fairy lights printed on the felt. Each light has a front (with the dots marking where the sequins goes) and a back.
Each sequins is stitched on and held with a bead. You bring your needle up through the hole in the sequin, through the bead and then back through the hole in the sequin to secure. I don't think, up to this point in my life, I've ever referred to a single sequin before. It's kinda like datum.
The instructions said to cut out the shapes and then embellish but I chose to do it the other way around, because it's easier to hold a larger piece of felt. Here's the front of the fairy light all sequins up and the back of the light.
Here's the light all stitched together! Most of the shapes on the stocking were stuffed so they had polyfil between the 2 pieces of felt, but the lights were mercifully stuffing free.
Next up is the light cap. Here's a whole bunch of them.
Cut out the light cap, fold it in half around the top of the fairy light, stitch around the outside to secure it closed and to the light.
And yup, even the tiny light cap gets embellished with a sequin and bead.
Repeat that last step 7 more times. And also don't loose any of these suckers because they are tiny and totally edible according to the closest feline.
Once you've finished a fairy light stitch it down on a cord of black thread you made earlier.
Repeat a bunch more times.
Hey, you have a stocking!
I think my favourite is the pug. That face is just too cute. I do like the jumper on the brown dog though.
Actually, they're all pretty cute.
I didn't keep track of how long the stocking took me but one of the Amazon reviews says it was about 60 hours for them and that sounds about right. This kit was surprisingly fun and easy. And the kit is so intensely tacky it's almost endearing. I'm almost tempted to do another one, like the cats in ugly Christmas sweaters ornaments (and that's the name of the kit I'm not even being judgemental here) or the coastal Christmas tree, which is barely hideous at all and actually well suited to an Australian Christmas.
(no subject)
Date: 2 November 2025 03:56 pm (UTC)The 'family' aspect of holidays is pushed hard - I don't like it either. But it sounds like you're handling it in the way most likely to work for you. I've had 9 Christmases away from family. My family isn't even awful, but somehow I prefer it. Gotta do what you gotta do.
(no subject)
Date: 2 November 2025 11:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 27 November 2025 03:34 am (UTC)