I know its been a while since I've published a post (though I have written many!) but this one had to happen today! A couple of weeks ago, Anne began pulling things together for her first Christmas party here in Lafayette. She'd just returned from Thanksgiving in Louisville where she must have had plenty of time to scour numerous catalogs because she had very definite ideas on how she wanted to decorate the house. Amidst all the collecting, gathering, ordering, and organizing, she found it necessary to have CUSTOM made stockings for their new mantle! This was after I'd strung lights on both my Christmas tree she's using AND lights on garlands around the front door. She managed to find all the various fabrics and notions . . . and what can I say, I'm a sucker for anything that has to do with My Darlings . . . nothing is too much!
By last Saturday, the parts and pieces were delivered to my home. Anne has this thing about piping and seems everything I make for her is piped (though I never enjoyed making piping, I've gotten pretty darned good at it in this past year!).
I thought about this stuff all night long. Anne's most specific requests were that the stockings be large enough to actually hold gifts AND that each of the stockings (oh wait, did I mention that the number of stockings had grown to include one for both Mommy and Daddy!) should contain one element of each of the five base fabrics and notions! Okay. No biggie, except I didn't sleep restfully because I was too busy trying to collect and arrange all of this in my head!
Alas, I woke on Sunday morning, drew the pattern pieces for the stockings,
cut them out: boys in the beige linen and girls in the sage suede cloth, and arranged stuff on each one (its really difficult to come up with four stocking designs that coordinate, range from frilly to non-frilly AND the ultimate . . . meet Anne's test!). I called Anne and she came over around noon thirty to pass her eye of inspection on what I'd laid out. Here's Avery's pinned up for her to view:
The stockings (at least My Darlings' stockings) had to be ready for the big z'affair! With her approval on the layout, I've spent a little time each evening of this week working on putting these things together. Well, Anne has this way of finding fabrics with totally different weights . . . she's a textures girl . . . and, that was the case with the sage suede cloth. Too flimsy to support the weight of the trims. I didn't have time to get out to the fabric store so I used some left over linen I had in the closet to (you got it!) cut out another pair of stockings to interface the sage ones! One more thing, both sides of the stockings are trimmed . . . double the fun!
Well, long about Tuesday, Anne told me she'd found someone who could embroider the names on the stocking cuffs! Yippee!! Anne said that I should go ahead and do cuffs for Abigail and me! All cuffs were already cut but before I'd trust anyone to do the embroidery on the cuffs I had to give 'em specific instructions! Boy, did I!!!!
The cuffs were returned to me on Wednesday, perfectly embroidered. But, I had to go to see My Darlings Wednesday and Thursday night so there was little time for stitching!
But oh my goodness, I woke this morning and with a vengence I got moving on the stockings for Avery and Riggs. Though not yet lined (I can't seem to locate any lining fabric in my house and clearly I don't have time to get out to the fabric store!) but more than usable for hanging on the mantle for tomorrow evening's z'affair . . . .
Wish I could be a bug on the wall to hear how Anne tells folks about the stockings!!
