All About Sewing Christmas Stockings

A basic Christmas stocking is a relatively simple sewing project. The step by step directions will guide even a beginner through sewing a stocking. If you have never sewn before, I recommend sewing one of the easiest free sewing patterns first but you can move on to sewing the curved seams of a stocking once you have familiarized yourself with basic sewing machine operation, sewing seams and sewing straight.

Machine Embroidery is not something most Great-grandmothers had done when they made family Christmas Stockings. Today we can use this wonderful option to personalize and embroider so much faster than any two hands could create in the same amount of time. The design options are almost endless and being able to add a design that screams about some ones personality creates a wonderful personalized stocking.

• Embroidery Sewing Machines - Basic Information to Understand How Machine Embroidery Works and to Obtain Great Results
• Machine Embroidery Basics, Tips, Terms & Information
• Hooping & Stabilizing Basics for Machine Embroidery
• Machine Embroidery Designs and More!

Using applique methods you can be creative to decorate and personalize a Christmas Stocking. Use free online templates or coloring books to re-create a favorite character on the stocking. Just remember licensed images can only be used for your own personal use and may not be mass produced.

• Sewing Appliques - Technique and Free Patterns

Do you have a family member who is a denim fanatic? Recycle their jeans that you know they shouldn't be seen in public wearing, in to a Christmas Stocking that will last long beyond the time frame that those favorite jeans were wearable.

• More on Recycling Denim
• Dressing Up Denim -- Ways to Embellish Denim

Felting is one method to create your own fabric but felting is also a fantastic way to embellish other fabrics... even denim.

• Needle Felting Fabric Embellishment Photo Gallery
• Janome Xpression Needle Felting Machine
• Book Review - Needle Felting by Hand or Machine by Linda Turner Griepentrog and Pauline Wilde Richards
• Indygo Junction's Needle Felting - Book Review

Fabric stores can be few and far between in some areas and even if they carry the fabric you have in mind, you may not want to pay the price for the fabric. Use different methods to create your own fabric using scraps you've collected all year long. Design your own special fabric and create a personalized stocking that is bound to become a family heirloom.

• Create Your Own Quilted Fabric
• Crazy Quilting

Do you have a family member who never seems to outgrow one particular Christmas gift... A young lady who is always looking for new things for her hair, or nail polish and manicure supplies? A young man who collects those small cars and trucks. A smaller stocking embellished with one of the many embellishment techniques is a great way to present a personalized gift that will bring many smiles. You can even wrap the small items so they can open each and every "little" gift inside the stocking.... it makes the fun and anticipation last a little longer.
One of the favorite gifts my husband and I do, for adult friends, is a small stocking filled with small sample liquor bottles.
Using a copy machine, you can create any size Christmas Stocking from a Basic Christmas Stocking Pattern

• Free Printable Pattern for a Smaller Size Stocking and Free Directions to Assemble

I have never mastered knitting but many people do knit and a knitted Christmas Stocking is a very popular option for a personalized Christmas stocking.

Hand sewn embroidery is not only a way to make wonderful embellishments, it is also a way to embroidery the history... "Made for Uncle Joe by Aunt Suzi 12/25/2011"... inside the stocking top so the history will stay with the stocking for generations and no one will ever wonder how that beautiful homemade stocking came into being.

If you love knitting, you will want to check out this free stocking pattern on knitting.about.com. This stocking has pizzazz and is bound to bring a smile to anyone's face... especially when they realize you made it just for them!