The Stockings Were Hung By the Chimney With Care ...

By the title of the post, you know what's coming!! I'm pretty proud of this one, so let's just get right to it!

At some point in the last, few months (the days run together, don'tcha know ...), I was wandering through the Christmas goods in Hobby Lobby because I was lured by the 50%-off signs. There are the most fun, little tid-bits that can be used for all sorts of reasons in there, and I figured I'd find something fun for The House. I was weaving between the aisle displays when what to my wondering eye should appear  but the package of Santa hats! I immediately saw stockings in them and grabbed a bag.

Today, the vision came to fruition. From left to right, I reveal THE STOCKINGS:

I didn't take a ton of process pictures because I was on a roll, but I can tell you about it. Basically, in the store, I turned the hat package upside to see the white trim at the top. And, to me, that said "stocking." I figured I could just sew the stocking shape from the hat. And, yes, that's as far as I got. I have this thing about usually being able to do it if I can see it. (It's like getting somewhere because you know exactly where you're going but you couldn't give directions if you had to. Your brain just knows what to do.) Besides, what did I have to lose when it was 50% off of what I seem to recall $1.99. I'm a low-risk kind of gal.

How it happened: I cut the pompom off, turned the hat inside out and freehand-sewed the shape. I didn't get to use quite as much of the red as I anticipated because I needed to keep the white trim level at the top of the stocking. But, it turned out perfect in terms of size, so that limitation became built-in excellence.

The process pic I do have is this one:

Here you see inside-out hats with the pompoms gone. At this stage, I also roughly drew around the first stocking onto the hats so I wouldn't have to keep an eye on where I was really headed with the needle and thread.*

* I had a Hallmark Christmas movie on, after all. I didn't want to be too, entirely distracted! And, for the record, this is the first Hallmark Christmas movie I've seen where the big-business guy actually won the heart of the lead over the small-town, flannel-wearing doctor. I KNOW!

Okay, so in the span of movie time, I got 5 stockings sewn. As there are 5 people who actually live The House, that made sense to me. The most difficult part of this stage was turning the stockings right-side out after sewing. The opening at the top is so small that this was quite an effort. I used the end of a spoon to encourage the turning process by using it to try and shove the material through the top. It was still a bear, but, I got it! Fortunately, the material is reasonably strong, so none of the efforts tore anything. That would have resulted in tears. Just keeping it real.

So, that was last night. Today warranted a trip to Hobby Lobby to see what they had to use as hangers. I have some little hooks that could be used, but they would have to be drilled into the fireplace mantle. I wasn't entirely against this as I had an overnight realization that, worse-coming-to-worse, I can get a second fireplace so I can leave the hooks screwed in to one. (The fireplace is $7, btw. I'm willing to have one in the Christmas stash.) At the same time, I didn't want to have to get a second if there was another solution.

Well, we found one! In the jewelry-making section, the Hub and I found clip-on earring backings:

I saw two possible ways to use them, so, they came home with me. While in the store, I also had the inspiration of trying to attach them to the mantle with the Elmer's putty stuff I use for hanging things instead of having to purchase a second fireplace.

Upon home investigation, when I opened the clasp ...

... it became very apparent what to use. I straightened the hook the pen is pointing to so I could cut off the smaller hook with a wire cutter. Then, I just reshaped the hook with some pliers. I chose the particular hook I used because you can see a little "nob" thing at the top on the back. I wedged a butter knife between the nob and the back of the hook to bend it up to a 90-degree angle. This is what I knew I could use to attach to it the mantle. The process to bend them up was easy enough but a little tricky as too much bending just snapped it off. I only blew two of them, though. GO, ME!

In no time, I had hooks on the mantle!

The putty, of course, got cleaned off between my fingernails and some detailing with the side of a needle:

Now, it just needed the stockings! They got their finishing touches by creating hangers for them. I braided embroidery floss (red and green) and white string (because I have no white embroidery floss 😬):

Then, I sewed it to the back of the stocking:

I went in through the back, went through both ends of the braid on the inside of the stocking and came back out. I did one more round through the back, around the braid and back out again because it helped keep the little knots at the end of the braids under control.

And, when they didn't behave, they got shoved in the stocking with the end of the pliers:

You gotta do what you gotta do ...

And, then, there was this:

How SCRUMPTIOUS is this?!?!?

It looks fab in the living room, but I'll show that when The House gets the full Christmas treatment! I anticipate giving at least some of them more decoration, but, for now, they hang in anticipation of tiny treats ...