Posts
I finished my very own Christmas stocking! It is 100% complete, and hanging on the fireplace already! My goal was to get it done by Thanksgiving, but I actually finished it almost 3 weeks early!
I started this 2 years ago. It's hard to work on a Christmas stocking in the summer, so the majority of the work was actually done last fall.
The time consuming portion is the cross stitch, of course. When I bought this stocking, I picked out the most beautiful stocking in the store, not thinking about level of difficulty. I have since learned that most beautiful also means most tedious. No part of counted cross stitch is actually difficult; if you know how to count to twenty, you can figure it out. The tedious part came from having so many colors involved; I was constantly switching thread. The area at the top with my name in it is the only part that had any solid blocks of color, and even there I had to stitch the stars in first. The Christmas tree is a good example of an area that has a lot more colors than you would expect. Also, usually with counted cross stitch you get a break from looking at the pattern when you go back to complete the Xs, but this pattern used mainly half cross stitch, meaning that instead of Xs, I was making /s.
After all of the cross stitch is done, it's a little anti-climactic. It seemed like I should be done, but my stocking looked a little dull, not beautiful like the picture. The backstitching really made everything pop. It also went a lot quicker than the cross stitching. Here's a few before and after shots.
(Note how you can barely make out the deciduous trees on the left, but how well they stand out on the right.)
Once the backstitching was done, I moved on to couching. I had never heard of couching before. At first it seemed like more work for the exact same effect as backstitching. Basically, you have one needle that pulls the outline thread around. Then, with another needle and piece of thread, you tack down the outline thread. This allows you to make curves rather than all straight lines with a back stitch.
(Notice the floating sleigh on the left.)
After the couching was done, I took a 10 month break, because I was dreading the next part...French knots. Previously, I was afraid of French knots because there's not really a good way to redo them if you mess up. So last weekend, I got the stocking out again and tackled the knots. Over 200 French knots later (rough estimate), I'm pretty good at French knots. I even figured out how to do them left handed!
So after all of the detail work was done, I again was a little down. All of this work and I still don't have a stocking? I decided to just plow through and finish it up that night. This was probably the scariest part of it all. I had to cut my beautiful stocking. Of course, I wasn't cutting through the part where I had stitched, but I really couldn't recover from a mistake at this point. So I cut it out, stitched it together on the sewing machine, and then hand stitched the top down inside the front. It was a stocking! The last part was just making the hook to hang it on. I really like braiding, so I was happy to braid the yarn for the hook. Then a few stitches tacked that on to the side of the stocking and I was done! It was a great feeling.
Supplies Needed:
- Hoop
- Pencil (To cross out what you've already stitched)
- Sewing Machine and Thread (To join front and back)
