The project...

is finished!!

For those who do not know, I had this great idea to make Ben's mom Christmas stockings. Every Christmas as we go thru our stocking goodies Marilyn comments how she has always wanted to have the stockings embroidered with our names. Well, after last Christmas and hearing her say this again, that's when I got the idea to make stockings to match her original stockings and put names on them!! I thought about this "project" for a few days, and when I told Ben my idea he did think it was a good idea, but he also thought that it was a big project. I continued to think about this idea and couldn't get the idea out of my head, so we got the stockings, made a trip to JoAnn's for fabric and found fabric that would coordinate with hers. I would need to make 15 stockings. No sweat, right?!? I cut out 8 green and 8 red...this way she would already have an extra one...one for Melanie's way in the future spouse or any other grandchildren. With the help of my sister Kim and my mom we got them sewed together. The first obstacle that I ran into was the names!! I called around to a couple of shops who do embroidery, but the cost was a bit out of our budget. So my first thought was back-stitching the names on. I traced Kayla's name onto one of the stockings and started stitching with red thread...problem!! Her name wasn't showing up against the patterned background. So I stopped using red, unpicked what I had done and tried again in black...it was better but still not showing great. It was clear that stitching them wasn't going to work. So my next idea was to cut letters out of the red or green fabric and using "wonder under" fuse them onto the stocking and blanket stitch around each and every letter...100 plus letters!! After deciding that only the red fabric looked like it might work I cut out everybody's name and started with Anna's name. I had her name completely finished when I realized that her name was only 4 letters long and it barely fit on the sock...this wasn't going to work either! So, we brainstormed other ideas...writing the names with magic marker, making tags with the names and attaching them to the sock, using only the first letter of the names, writing them on with puff paint...I was getting desperate and wondering if I would ever finish!! I sat down one day and cross-stitched Kayla's name...I showed Ben and we both thought that this would have to work as we were quickly running out of time!! I spent several days cross-stitching everyone's name. My next obstacle was binding/finishing them, I had such a difficult time binding them...only after unpicking several failed binding attempts, unpicking two stockings COMPLETELY and enlisting the help of my mom, yet again, we were able to get them completely finished, names and everything last Friday (11/28). Ben and I spent a couple hours stitching the names on (just to reinforce them), next came ribbon and buttons, clipping the long threads, ironing them and placing them in a box to give them to Marilyn on Sunday (11/29). I am so glad that this project is finished!!

Finished!!