Easy to follow instructions for sewing a Christmas stocking with video
Hey y’all – today I’m sharing our new Christmas stockings. Every few years I get a craving for a change in our Christmas decor style, and this year I also needed to add a 5th stocking as we’ve added a 5th family member. Luckily it’s easy to sew Christmas stockings and I’ve got a tutorial including video to show you.
To sew the stockings shown below, which are our current ones, I started with natural ivory cotton velveteen from Dharma Trading Co, which is also where I got the dye I used to personalize the fabric. You can see more about how I dyed the fabric here. The colors I used were Seafoam, Bubble Gum Pink, Indigo, Turquoise and a combination of Stormageddon (a discontinued color) and Glacier Blue diluted with extra water for the gray one.
I let each family member choose a color from the bright and cheery non-traditional Christmas decor colors I used on the tree. I went with modern and colorful Christmas decor when we moved into this house three years ago. The gray stockings at the top of this post were made for the last Christmas at our old house and they transitioned well into the decor here since they were neutral. But I didn’t have fabric to sew another gray stocking, so we went with new ones for everyone.
Three years ago I sewed up matching gray quilted velvet stockings. Those were more minimal than the hand knit stockings I switched from. And before the hand knit stockings we had appliquéd stockings, which you can see here. The appliqué stockings now reside at my mom’s house, where she has stockings for every kid, kid’s spouse, and grandkid.
All of the stockings – our current velveteen ones, the previous gray quilted ones, and the older appliquéd ones were sewn from the same free pattern I have in my pattern gallery. Read on to find out how to get access to the pattern gallery.
Fabric Selection
The shift toward more modern Christmas decor coincided with a shift towards less busy design in our home overall, so I love how these turned out. That quilted velvet and creamy fleece fabric below were both exactly what I didn’t even know I wanted until I saw them in the fabric store.
I will say, that though the velvet (from Joann) is perfect for these stockings, it has a yucky polyester backing inside and zero drape, so I wouldn’t want to sew a garment out of it. On the other hand, I would totally sew clothing from the cotton velveteen, but as you can see below, I didn’t line or interface this fabric and the stockings are floppier.
And as shown by some of my more rustic stockings below (these actually go well with my mom’s Christmas decor, which is perfect because they both hang at her house) you can make these out of any kind of fabric you want. For the appliquéd stockings I used pre-quilted cotton for the body and quilting cotton for the cuffs, toes and appliqué pieces. You can even use faux fur for a luxurious look.
So choose your fabric accordingly. If you want your stockings to have a lot of body and weight, choose something like pre-quilted fabric. For floppier, more casual stockings that look more like actual socks, choose thinner fabric. If you want body but you’re in love with a drapey-er fabric, then you’ll need to add lining and/or interfacing to get that look.
How to Sew Christmas Stockings
I made a video so you can see how to use the free Christmas stocking pattern I shared a few years ago to make these. To make your own stockings, you’ll need:
- Fabric – 1/2 yard for the main stocking and 1/4 yard of the contrast fabric. If you use quilting cotton or another lightweight fabric for the main stocking, I suggest adding heavyweight fusible interfacing or quilt batting and lining to the entire stocking if you don’t want it to flop like my velveteen ones do.
- The pattern
To get the Christmas stocking pattern, click your preferred option below to get the free pattern only as a newsletter subscriber, or you can buy the digital pattern + printable instructions with the gallery All Access Pass.
Please note that all my free patterns are licensed for personal use only (no selling items made from this unless you purchase it) and by downloading you are agreeing to this license.
To sew this up, watch the video below. You can also watch on YouTube here if you prefer. Note that the pattern includes 1/2 inch seam allowances.
Sewing Part 1: Cut and Sew The Stocking Pieces
Start by cutting out your stocking pieces. You’ll need two mirrored body pieces, a cuff and a loop. The cuff and the loop are rectangles and dimensions are written on the pattern. If you are sewing a fuzzy fabric, you’ll want to consider the nap and maybe cut the fabric in a single layer instead of folding it. For more about fabric nap and fuzzy fabrics, see this post.
To add the contrast toe and/or appliqués to your stocking, you can find directions in this post. Note that for these stockings I sewed the cuffs in a different way that I do in the video. I think the video method is better, but both work.
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