Crafting updates

My quest to have a mostly homemade Christmas continues. I can't believe I only have one week left though! Oh, the stress and angst of it all. :)

Just kidding, I am doing the best I can, and at this point am making things that I hadn't especially planned to, or the things in my head are either easy or stuff I just need to assemble. I just hope I can find all my supplies at home! And yay, I just heard from the short bus that they can take me to Joann's tomorrow after work so I can get a few last minute things for a couple projects I thought of in the last few days.

I'm very excited about most of my projects. I hope all the recipients like them as well!

One of my projects was for a friend of mine at work. Last year, I made a Christmas stocking for a friend of mine that -- I thought -- really needed one! I personalized it with an orange kitty to match her cat, Julius. Here's that one:





My other friend asked me to make her a couple of stockings for her pets, Jersey and Cleopatra. I was going to make her something different as a gift, but this idea was even better, since I knew she'd like it! I saw photos of her pets on Facebook and modeled the stockings after them.

I couldn't find any plain stockings when I went to Hobby Lobby this past time (well, except for like 3-inch ones and 30-inch ones). I did find some small fleece sheets there though in the felt section. They were softer and thicker than the felt, and were cheap too, only like 33 cents a sheet. What a bargain! I already had a bunch of felt, beads and embroidery thread at home, so I was all set.

Here is the one of Jersey, who is a tan and white hound-esque dog:

In the early stages



Done, bottom half



Full stocking



I made a little dangling bone to make the top more interesting



And Cleopatra. She was harder to make because she is calico and I was worried that her face wouldn't show up enough.



And for the top of the kitty one. I had the mouse body and tail put together, complete with eyes, but for some reason it didn't look right. Seriously, it took me forever to realize that the mouse ears were missing ... duh!



These weren't terribly hard to make. Probably the hardest part was getting the calico patterns close to being right, drawing the shape of the stocking (this was more complicated than I thought!) and hand sewing the fleece. It was harder to get the needle through that than the felt.

I gave them to my friend today, so yay, I was happy that she liked them. Off to another project now! :)