Christmas Stockings for Tropical Climates and Those Who Would Just Rather Be On The Beach

As a lot of you know, I have an Etsy store where I sell a lot of things that I post about in my blog here. Around this time of year, after the hand full of Viking hat orders that I get just before Halloween, I start to get requests for Christmas stockings. I don't make just any Christmas stockings. I like to make ones that are a little outside the ordinary. Some of the ones I have made in the past include monster feet, dragon feet, mermaid tails, pirate boots, victorian boots, high heel boots, ballerina slippers, wolf paws, puppy paws, and bare feet. I even made a monster ballerina stocking for my wife.

I love the challenge of coming up with designs that are new and different, and I put in all my ads to message me for custom orders. So, I wasn't altogether surprised that during the first part of November I got a message requesting a special order. At first we were discussing making bare feet stockings for a husband and wife as well as maybe a pirate boot and ballerina for a daughter a son and a puppy paw for the family pet.

 As we exchanged emails back and forth establishing exactly what was wanted, the customer sent me a picture of a stocking that she saw online and asked if I could make one like it. Pictured to the right is the original photo. I checked all over online, and I couldn't find anywhere selling them. From the blog article where the photo was posted, it looks like the person may have purchased them on a trip to Hawaii. I had seen the photo before, but I had never seriously considered how I would make the pattern.



Of course, it being me, I said, "Sure, I'll give it a go!" I spent the next week working up a pattern eyeballing the photo and making my prototype. I then sent a picture of my mockup to the customer to see if it was what she wanted. It turns out, it was. She ordered one for herself, her husband (with hairy toes for him), and her son and daughter plus the original puppy paw for her dog. It was a fun back and forth deciding on colors and themes and embroidery for the names on the cuffs. It's the first time I've gotten to use the text option on my embroidery machine. I was really looking forward to testing that out too.

I think they turned out really, really well. It's a design that I will definitely keep in my pattern book. I have never claimed to be a great pattern maker, so I'm rather proud of myself for how well they turned out just from looking at a photo.  Below are the stockings that I made for the family.
This one is for the dad, Chris.    .

This one is for the mom, Meg.

This one is for the son, Wes.

This one is for the daughter, Sophia.

And this one is for the puppy, Ozzie.

Monster Stockings: The Dragon Foot

I've been making different monster themed stockings for a while now, and this past Christmas one of the new ones that I made was a dragon foot monster stocking.

I found this awesome, metallic silver snakeskin fabric at Hancock Fabrics and was inspired to make something with it. It ended up looking great, but the fabric was really problematic because it frayed quite a bit as I worked with it. The hang tab and claws are made out of black felt. I also made a lining of black felt as well to give it shape because the silver fabric was very limp and didn't hang very well on its own. I stuffed the claws and the toes with recycled cotton batting that came out of some old pillows that I keep around for just that purpose. Here is how it turned out when it was finished.

No two of my monster stockings are exactly the same, but I do have a basic pattern that I began with.  I used the Bare Foot Christmas Stocking pattern from the Disney Family Fun website and made some adjustments to it. Instead of cutting out all four toes, I used the edge of the toes as a guideline to make more of a webbed-toe look. I then took away the cuff and added on the claws for a rawrrr look. I think it turned out pretty well.

I posted a picture of this one on my Facebook page after it was completed and one of my high school friends said he wanted one too. I swear there was a whole bolt of this fabric two weeks before that, but when I went back for more there was none at all and no one remembered seeing it ever. I checked around at all of the fabric stores in the area, and no one had anything even similar. 

That was in December. While I was traveling in Iowa just a couple of weeks ago for a renaissance festival I found some even better snakeskin / dragon scale fabric. It was at Hancock Fabrics in Ankeny, Iowa. The fabric is a black, stretch knit with red metallic snakeskin print on it. Since it's a knit, I didn't have the awful fraying issue that I had with the silver fabric before. Also, what really adds a nice pop to this fabric is that the surface is scaled with tiny clear squares of a plasticy material that creates an awesome scaled look and feel.  I will give a heads up if you find any of this fabric and decide to use it. Sewing through the plastic scale material gummed up my sewing machine needle after a while, and every now and then the needle would just slide across a scale rather than through it, which caused a few skipped stitches that had to be fixed later.

Rather than do the webbed toes on this one like the silver one, I took the original pattern and connected toes two-three and toes four-five together to form three big toes. I made the claws more conical in shape. The claws, the pull tab, and the cuff were made from black pvc material purchased from Joann Fabrics. I lined it the same way as the first one with black felt and stuffed the claws and toes to fill them out more. Here is a picture of the red one.

I'll be posting up more of my stockings probably closer to the holiday time to share how I made those. So far I have in my repertoire a ballerina, monster ballerina, high heeled boot, victorian boot, pirate boot, ice skate, furred monster,  wolf, fox, mouse with cheese (for my kitty Buster), and elf stocking.