Review: Festive Christmas Stockings

Crafted Christmas stockings are, like, the pinnacle of craftiness. You know there’s a hard-core maker in the family when everyone has a handmade stocking (in my family it was my grandma; my mom has since taken up the tradition of knitting stockings for everyone).

If you’d like to cross stitch stockings for folks in your family or as a gift for someone else, Festive Christmas Stockings by Herrchners for Leisure Arts is a good place to start.

The book only has four patterns, but they’re cute and have lots of fun details.

The Celestial Angels Stocking, designed by Barbara Sestok, features three angels making music, as well as a moon and stars and a row of hearts and snowflakes at the top of the stocking. Her Nordic Santa Stocking has space for a name at the top and a Father Christmas style Santa holding a Christmas tree and carrying a sack of gifts. This one includes charts for all letters in upper and lower case.

Linda Bird designed the Nutcracker stocking, which has four different sizes of old nutcracker men, as well as a drum and a teddy bear. There’s space for a name in all caps and an uppercase alphabet is included.

Finally the project featured on the cover is the Jolly Snowman Stocking, designed by Alma Lynne Hayden. This one has a sort of snowman/clown hybrid and is decorated with hearts and little repeating patterns. There’s also room for a name here and another alphabet to work with.

The book describes how to make the stocking using fabric to line and back it. A couple of the projects also use trim on the edges of the stocking, and a couple use beads in the stitching to make it extra fancy.

The charts are large and easy to read and while the patterns aren’t for beginners, they’re definitely fun projects that the recipient is sure to use for years to come.

About the book: 32 pages, paperback, 4 patterns. Published 2016 by Leisure Arts. Available as an ebook for $7.99.

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Christmas Stocking Cross Stitch Patterns

Unique Stitch Crafts is a Turkish designer that has a couple of main interests in their cross stitch designs: travel and Christmas stockings.

By far the biggest category in their storefront is Christmas stockings, with more than 100 options to choose from. There are fully stitched fronts with designs classic and whimsical (like an alicorn and a pastel rainbow, or a bunny in Harlequin costume playing violin to a mushroom) and designs that just go across the cuff of the stocking. There are ornaments with a Nutcracker or Frozen theme, New York City stockings and stockings for your dinosaur.

As an example, here’s a stocking covered with mini holiday designs, which you could also use as ornaments if you wanted. The full design is 165 by 255 stitches, which comes out to 10.3 by 16 inches, or 26 by 40.6 cm on 16 count fabric. The pattern just makes the front of the stocking so you need to grab some fabric for the back of the stocking and sew it together yourself.

There’s also a large collection of travel cross stitch patterns, including national parks designs both large and mini, and travel poster style designs for many US states and cities. (There’s not an Arkansas, which is my standard test since I live there, but there is a pattern of the Mississippi River bridge in Memphis, which is technically half in Arkansas.)

If you’re more of a world traveler you’ll find more of the travel poster style designs for cities and countries, including Thailand and China, Berlin, Sydney and Marrakech.

In addition to all of that, you’ll find patterns called retro, which includes a wide range of designs, but many seem to be food and coffee related; folk art designs (lots of flowers and birds); and famous paintings translated to cross stitch. Smaller categories include Christmas, Halloween, animals, kids and castles.

Check out all the fun designs at Unique Stitch Crafts on Etsy.

[Photo: Unique Stitch Crafts]

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