So this holiday season, while there were certainly a lot of gifts that were purchased and given, I had a few that I wanted to make. The first was for some extended family that have a new child.
It is tradition in my family to have Christmas stockings. And not just any stockings. These must be handmade of red felt. They must have big white letters on the front with the name of the stocking's owner. They must have white felt fringe along the top of the stocking. And they must have holiday images made of felt on the stocking. Otherwise, the imagination is the limit for what images to place on the stocking.
My great-grandmother and her sister started this tradition. I still remember my mother's stocking as a child. My grandmother was the one to make the stockings for me and my sister. The first stocking I made was my sophomore year in college. As a holiday craft activity, I got my roommates to sit down with me to make stockings to hang in front of the fireplace of our apartment. I didn't make my next stocking until I was married and my husband and I bought our first house. I made stockings for everyone who celebrated that Christmas with us that year.
It was years later when I was visiting a distant relative (the granddaughter of my great-grandmother's sister) that I saw that she had stockings exactly the same as my family's!
For this project, I had fun this time looking at Pinterest for some inspiration. I searched for "felt Christmas decorations" to find items that would look good on the stockings. I found some of my inspiration here, here and here.
I like to think that maybe someday I'll have grandkids that I can make these stockings for, and that future generations of mine will have these family stockings hanging by their firesides.
