Make a Christmas stocking from a thrifted sweater
I don’t want you to panic here, but Christmas is only a couple of weeks away at this point – crazy, I know! Which means there’s not a lot of time left for complicated projects. That’s why I’m sharing this quick DIY Christmas stocking tutorial. It came about after I found the cute sweater-inspired stocking on the right at Home Goods. I bought two of them and wanted two more stockings to coordinate with them.
Rather than spend oodles of time hunting for just the right coordinating stocking in stores or online, I stopped at the thrift store on my way back from Home Goods, picked out a men’s sweater ($2.00, thank you very much!), and had my two thrifted stockings made an hour later.
Here’s all you need:
- an old sweater you don’t mind cutting up and that coordinates with your decor
- another stocking to use as a pattern
- some plain (in my case white) fabric scraps to use for the backing.
The steps were easy, too:
1) Lay the sweater you plan on using flat on your cutting surface. I cut mine open so that I could use both sides of the sweater separately. I think it helps to cut off the sleeves so that you can have a flatter surface to work with. Decide how you want to position your pattern on the sweater fabric. I decided to use the bottom knit band of the sweater as the top edge of my stocking (sort of like a cuff) so that I wouldn’t have to mess with hemming the sweater fabric. Now that you know how you want to position your pattern on the sweater piece, start layering:
2) Place your backing fabric on your table, face up. Place your sweater piece on top of the backing, face down.
3) Position your pattern (I just used another Christmas stocking as my pattern) on top of both layers.
4) Cut all the way around your pattern, 1/2″ away from edge of pattern. I left an extra 1/2″ of fabric on the top edge of my backing piece so that I could turn it down as a hem to finish the raw edge. Remember, the front of the stocking uses the sweater band as the top edge, so it needs no hem.
5) Pin along the edges. Along the top edge, the backing fabric should extend above the front piece by 1/2″. Turn that down 1/2″ so that you make a sort of hem. (You could always turn down the top edge of the backing and hem it before pinning the two pieces together, but I was lazy.)
6) Start at the top of the stocking on one side, sew a 1/2″ seam all the way around the stocking until you get to the other top edge.
7) Turn the stocking right sides out.
8) Make a loop for hanging out of a piece of the backing and tack it just inside the top of the stocking along the back seam.
That’s it – a cute, inexpensive, and quick project to check off your list! I stuffed my stockings with a little bit of fiberfill that I had on hand so that they looks fuller and hung it right up beside its partner.
