Days of Christmas: Day 14

As you may remember, sometime in September, I declared my intention to create Christmas stockings for my new family, modeled after the stockings in this photo that I found on the internet:
After posting that photo, my friend Beth emailed to say that she had seen that book at her local library. She was good enough to check it out for me and send me the pattern for the stockings! (Yes, I was too lazy to go to my own local library to find the book).

With the help of the pattern, some improvisation, and only one major wound, I finally completed the stockings last week:
It was harder than it might seem. First of all, the "pattern" in the book was very tiny. You can see it on the left side of this picture. The instructions said to increase its size by 200%.
Instead of taking it to Kinko's, or somewhere else with the capabilities of printing something larger than an 8.5" x 11", I just eyeballed it and tried to sketch it 200% larger. In my opinion, it should have said 300% or 400% larger. These turned out to be baby stockings.

I gathered all my holiday fabrics.
And set out to cutting.
There was so much cutting. Four pieces of stocking-sized fabric per stocking (two for outside, two for lining), plus interfacing, plus two toe and two heel pieces per stocking, plus binding, plus loops, plus letter squares . . . plus cutting a whole new one for me after I messed mine up too badly to recover.
Lining up the buttons on the letters was a little tricky too. But, I figured it out.

Things tend to get a little messy when I am sewing. I don't have my own space for it.
Troubletron ironed the bindings and loops for me. Very helpful!
As I began to sew them on, though, something horrible happened.
This very bad photo was taken some time after the injury, but as you can see from the spot on my fingernail, I sewed (with the sewing machine) right through my pointer finger on my left hand. The blood flow started almost immediately. And, of course I started freaking out because I could see the needle through my finger.
Troubletron came over to see what I was yelling about, saw the blood, and took a quick sit-down. But, it wasn't as bad as you might think. Luckily, it happened when I was manually turning the sewing dial (so the needle was moving fairly slowly and I was able to stop it) while trying to retrieve the bobbin thread.

Less than an hour after injury, I got back to work.
Troubletron helped me with the finishing work, like pulling out the curved seams and ironing them.
And, though smaller than I would have liked, I think they turned out beautifully.
Would you believe I've never blanket-stitched before? The internet taught me how!
I am loving the mixtures of fabric patterns, and the buttons.
The fabrics are a mixture of newly purchased fabrics, fabrics I bought during college, and fabric I inherited from my mom's sewing stash from 30 years ago. I purposely chose fabrics from each time period to represent the mix of old and new.
I love their sameness, and their differences.
Family stockings done!