A Squared Craft Affairs: Ashley - Mini Stockings tutorial

Ok I am back on the straight and narrow writing posts for all you lovely people out there :) This last week I had a meeting with some of the other wives and my husbands command to start planning their annual christmas party. I was asked to make little miniature stockings for all the children attending. The original number was 35 so I made a few extras and I started out making my 44 stockings, but then there was a phone call and I was asked to make a few more lol so I ended up making 51 total. So if your wondering why it looks like there are more finished ones then what we started with that's why.

What you will need:

1yd of red felt
1/2yd of white felt
I ended up using 4 spools of the striped ribbon (3m spools)
And I only went through 1 spool of the red ribbon I used for the hangers.
Thread
Scissors
Felt tipped pen

So the first thing I did was I made a pattern out of a piece of cardboard. I made a 6in x 4in rectangle and then cut the shape from that to makesure I didn't make the stockings too big. Look for an update and I will scan in the pattern I used and you can always jsut use that if you don't feel like you can good a good shape on your own.

After I had my pattern I grabbed my yard stick and my red felt. I folded felt in half width wise (72in wide piece of felt) and then trimmed the edge so that I could have a nice straight line to start using my pattern on. Then I took my yard stick and my felt tipped pen and started drawing lines on my felt the height of my stockings. When that was taken care I place my pattern down on the felt and started tracing out my stockings.

Now the easiest way I found to cut all those out was with scissors. I have not yet completely mastered the art of the rotary cutter lol so it may be eaiser for you that way but with the tight spaces I preferred the scirssors. Once you have thsoe all cut out I laid my white felt out and 1 1/2in by width of the stocking to add the white up top.

Now it's time to bust out the sewing machine. I started with a normal running stitch but I notice in my test stocking that it made it really bulky right there and the stocking didn't look right and I hated it so my solution to that was I used a zigzag stitch to connect the red and whiteand that got out of that problem made the stockings sit so nicely. I had the tension on my machine at 4 just as an FYI and it shouldn't take you too long :).

Your next step will be to add the ribbon to hide your seam. I turned the machine's tension down to 2 so the ribbon would sit nicely for me and I used a normal old running stitch and I just lined the needle up in the middle of the foot like so. I sewed along both edges of the ribbon to make it look nice and finished.

This was the part that took me the longest....

But as you can tell it really adds a nice touch to the stockings :)

The final step is to sew it all together! I used a serger type stitch it was number 6 on my machine.

Take it slow if it's your first time using this stitch and if you aren't comfy using this stitch you can always go back to the zig zag it will do about the same thing I just like the finished look of the stitch I used. Make sure you turn your tesnion back up to 4, and get to work :) I added my little ribbon for the hanger into the final seam so be sure to remember that as well so you dont have to run another seam.