The Finish Line.

I made it. I finished Stella's stocking just now, as in, the day before Christmas. It needed to be done in time because I have this thing about having the one stocking, the right stocking, for life. Mine is a crocheted stocking with my name embroidered on it. And it's the right one for me. I looked a lot of stocking patterns before settling on this one. I considered cutting it out of felt and appliqueing it, knitting it, crocheting it, and (in a moment of weakness) buying it. But when I stumbled upon this pattern, I knew it was the one and set about gathering fat quarters. Don't ask me why I waited until this past Monday to start cutting when I knew full well that the stocking had to be done in time for her first Christmas, but I did and so this week was a little, um, crazy. Thankfully, Andrew is on winter break and he happens to be the most sane person I know so my insanity was nicely counter-balanced and I don't think our daughter will suffer any ill effects. At least she can't feel completely neglected by a parent who holes herself up in the craft room for hours on end when there is another parent (albeit, without breasts) who is willing and able to spend quality time raising her, right? Well, whatever, she has a kick ass stocking.

I had to do things a little differently (of course, why make anything simple?) and I cut as many of the strips as I could cut from the striped fabric I made. This meant that I had more patchwork than the pattern called for, so I changed the shape of my stocking to be taller and narrower. I think it's a little too narrow now that the binding is on, but it'll work. Of course my squares aren't lined up perfectly, but that's the kind of quilter I am. Whimsical: that's the look I'm going for (*eyeroll*). I loved doing the simple quilting, and on one side I used white thread while on the other I used a sort of hot pinkish orange. I was originally thinking of bedazzling her name on it with a letter in each square with my faboo kandi thingee, but the squares are really small (1") and I don't want to mess with the simple charm of it. I used white fabric with some silver sparkle to it, so it's definitely got some holiday bling going on. So for now there is no name on it, but that's something I'm willing to figure out for a future Christmas.

I bunged up the binding by putting the loop on the wrong side (insert expletive here), so I just tucked a little loop of some narrower seam binding of the correct side and stitched across the top. It works fine and looks OK.

The real joy of leaving this very important task to the absolute last minute is that I also had to juggle making my other Christmas presents (which I also conveniently left until the last minute) into the schedule. I am not kidding when I say that my planner for this week has entries such as: Piece stocking, cut batting and backing, pediatrician appointment, burn holiday cd. You know it's bad when you have to write the steps in your planner. Anyhoo, I am just about done with the crafting (Andrew is getting a gift that is still on the needles, but he's taking it a lot better than I am) and am now, finally, beginning to get seriously excited about introducing Bean to her first Christmas.

And here is the ornament I made her, which will be going into her stocking:

♥