"S" is for Scrap Fabric Stockings

Today's letter of the day is "S". And in my world, "S" typically stands for scrap in some form or another. Most of the time, that's scrapbooking. But not today. Today, it's fabric scraps and some cute little scrap fabric stockings.

You've heard of Christmas in July, right? Well...today it's Christmas in April. Just go with it.



If you're anything like me, you have a pile of fabric scraps sitting around just waiting for the right project to come along. If you're not, well...I'm a hoarder in this department. I just can't say goodbye to cute fabrics. It breaks my heart.

Now when I say scrap, I'm talking something larger than say 2" x 4". So it's not a miniscule size. It's still usable.

The girls at the office had been giving me a hard time for about a year, asking me to make some stockings for our office Christmas decor. I finally sat down and did it, with help from my scrap pile.

I had a lot of fat quarter leftovers from the Name Quilts that I had made the girls for Christmas and the Alphabet Soup Quilt that I had made for Emily.

I grabbed a pile of them and cut out 1" wide strips averaging about 8" in length. Some of them were a little shorter just because I didn't have that much fabric remaining. I pieced these together and sewed them into blocks. This was totally lazy sewing. I didn't use a single pin. It was fabulous.

I didn't have a pattern hanging around, so I used the same method that I used for the Pajama Pants, and created myself a pattern using unused wrapping paper. I just eyeballed it.

I cut out the stocking pattern from some white quilted fabric that I had hiding in my sewing chest. (I made a total of four of these puppies.) I sewed a 1/2" seam at the top of the stocking material so that it would have a nice pretty edge when I was done.

Once I had my stocking patterns cut and trimmed, I lined up the scrap blocks with the white pattern pieces and cut them to about the right lengths. I then folded down the tops and sewed a 1/2" seam so that it would have a matching nice edge to the white fabric.

I put the right sides of my stockings and fabric blocks together, pinned them, and sewed around the edges (except for the top) leaving about a 1/2" seam allowance on the quilted material.

I cut the excess strip fabric away to match the stocking material, and flipped the whole thing right side out.

By the way...the smaller your seam overhang, the better shape the stocking will have when you flip it right side out.

After that, I took a 2x4" strip of fabric, folded it so the right sides were touching, sewed a 1/2" seam allowance down the long side, and flipped the resulting tube right side out. This was my stocking hanger.

I folded the strip in half lengthwise and stitched it to the inside of the stocking. Now they're easy to hang.

And just like that, I had a set of four random (but matching) scrap stockings and a surprisingly large dent in my scrap stash. I love how simple they were to put together and we've gotten quite a few compliments on the stockings over the last couple of years at the office.

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