made in china

the first year david and i were married, we got cute little "homemade" christmas stockings at a craft store in provo.  i'm pretty sure we had a buy one get one free coupon, otherwise we wouldn't have even walked into this particular store.  we thought it'd be fun to get pace a stocking this year in the same/similar style as our stockings.  we went to the craft store last saturday and, to our dismay, couldn't find any stockings to speak of!  well, there were maybe 5 or so, but they were all very cheap looking and obviously mass-produced somewhere overseas.  on the drive home, we thought maybe our stockings would have a tag inside, giving us a clue as to who made them, and maybe we'd be able to find them online.  we got home, pulled out the tags and found "made in china"!  we had thought we'd gotten "homemade" stockings, as this was a store compiled of many different vendors selling their homemade wares.  ha!  joke on us.  

so i got online to look at homemade christmas stockings for sale on etsy.  as i scanned various overpriced stockings, it dawned on me that i could make one for pace myself!  i'd just sewn two quiet books, for pete's sake!  i still have a ton of fabric leftover and a sewing machine i'm not so afraid of anymore!  so...can you guess which stocking was NOT made in china? :

yup, mr. elf himself!  first i cut up all the red and green fabric i had leftover, and sewed them together how i imagined a quilt would go.  then i cut out a green inside layer, and a batting layer, and quilted the individual stocking sides.  then came mr. elf, and figuring out how to put the cuff on top correctly inside-out-topsy-turvy so after sewing the stocking inside-out, everything would line up perfectly once turned right-side-out.  phew!

cost: $0

time: all together, from cutting to sewing, probably 10-15 hours, spread over 3 days.

reaction: we'll see tomorrow when pace wakes up!