New Old School Felt Stockings

I grew up with felt stockings.  They had intricate depictions of Santa and his sleigh with lots of real tiny packages tumbling out of his sack.  Lots of glitter and gold thread....I'm sure they were incredibly tacky, but still hold a fond place in my heart.  Well, with our first bigChristmas almost here (our 2 year old daughter Coco is now a professional on Santa) I needed to get our stocking act together.  So, going back to my childhood, I opted for felt, but in a much more modern, cool, 2 dads in San Francisco kinda way.   I whipped these out in about 2 hours and they ended up costing less than $5.00 each (gotta love that!). Materials- Felt - you'll need a large piece for the stockings (18" if it's 48" wide) and some craft squares in different colors for the decoration- Glue - fabric glue is great, you could theoretically launder the stockings, but Elmer's is fine- Needle & Thread - I ran these through a sewing machine, but you could also do them by hand Make Your Stocking- Take your large piece of felt and fold it in half.  Draw your stocking shape.  You can free hand it or use an old stocking to trace for shape.- Cut out the stocking shape.  You're cutting through two pieces of felt, so you'll end up with a front and a back.- Pin (or just hold) your two pieces together and sew a seam aprox. 1/4" from the edge around the sides and the bottom of the stocking leaving the top open.  Use a thread that works with the felt color, since these are being sewn right side out, you will see the stitching.- Take a 1" x 4" strip, fold it in half and stitch it onto the back, top heel side of the stocking for a hanging loop. Go back and forth with the stitches for extra re-enforcement.Decorate Your StockingThere's no real right or wrong here.  Felt is easy to cut, no hemming necessary.  Cut out your pieces, lay them on your stockings, move them around and re-cut them until you get a stocking that you like and then glue the pieces in place.  You can find patterns for the pieces I used below (if you print them on an 11x17" paper, they will be the correct size), but feel free to create your own.For the poinsettia and holly stockings, here are a few tips:- To add a little dimension to the holly, run the holly leaf through the sew machine to get a spine on the leaf. - For the poinsettia, cut out your petal shapes and then fold the base of the petal in half and hold in place with a few stitches, that will give it a more three dimensional feel.  Then lay the pieces side-by-side in a circle.  You can stop there like I did with the red poinsettia or you can add a second layer of petals on top of the first like I did with the white one.  Then cut out a few small circles from one color and a few slightly large from another color and layer them on top of each other to cover the center.