Sweet B Custom Family Labor Stockings

Can i please apologize to my readers on the awful staging and photography here? bryan (my dear husband) is really the picture taker of the bunch and since he is very busy editing movies right now he has no time to indulge me in my little shop or blog! that plus the fact i was trying to take the picture in horrible lighting whilst holding a fitful babe...okay - enough excuses...onto the stockings!

These stockings deserve their own story. its a good one. promise. last year around this time i was expecting our second child (now named Bodie) and my sister-in-law was working for a trade show booth company and one of her clients was a textile company and i begged her to ask them for their previous year samples (which they throw away!!! can you believe it???) she brought me two - 2!! - boxes of samples...beautiful textiles - velvets and upholstery textiles...but very funky sizes...like half a yard with cuts all in them. i wasn't sure how to use this amazing stash of amazing fabrics...i came upon the idea to create stockings out of them - using the upholstery fabric for the base and the velvet to embroider.

now...bear with me...at this time...i was due Dec. 25th. i was preparing for a home birth. my mother was staying with us. my MIL and FIL were also staying with us. it was the week of my due date and all week long i had been having very frustrating contractions. like we were timing them and then they would stop. like Bryan kept pestering me every day about when he should fill the tub. like our midwife was called approximately 10 times! so...on the 23rd i thought that this was it and these contractions were in fact the real deal and then i found myself stared at by all the guests in my house and monitored and concerned and then i realized that i needed to leave...but i couldn't leave because i was having a HOME birth...so i had to stay at HOME. grrrrr...so i needed a project....so i decided to make stockings for my husbands entire family and my mother and my step-father - 15 people to be exact! 15 embroidered beautiful stockings....the perfect distraction!

what is sorta kinda funny is that i meant to make stockings for just our little family...i have always hated the stockings that Bryan bought at Target for me and Bryson and him and remembered the wonderful cross-stitched lovely velvet and satin stockings my mother had made for our family growing up and wanted the same on my mantle...but 4 stockings would not take up like 5 hours of sewing! and no one pestered me and i was left alone to concentrate on something other than contractions and it was the perfect distraction. i presented them to my very surprised and grateful MIL and I  went to bed that night and woke during the night with a jolt of a very active CONTRACTION and immediately ordered Bryan to fill the tub and call the midwife (which made him very happy to have a definite order) and began the journey of bringing sweet Bodie into this world.

So i have dubbed these my labor stockings and that memory of that time in our lives during the best Christmas ever will live on in these stockings...well her stockings...(my mother-in-laws) i never did get around that day to actually making any for us. Partly because i was over it at that point and partly because i felt wierd about embroidering Bodie's stocking...like i would jinx it or something...so flash forward to this year and to pulling out our Christmas decorations and our *lame* Target stockings and i just had to make some for us...cause it just wouldn't be right to let another year go by without some home-made stockings. I am really happy with how they turned out and Bryan (of course) wants me to take them to Christmas tree farms and try to sell the bejeebees out of them...which i don't know what planet of "all the time in the world" he is from, but he does have a good point.

I recently embroidered some stockings for a girlfriend who lamented that all the local embroidery places have recently gone out of business, so i thought i would offer these to any of you who may be interested.

I have refrained from posting them in our shop because my fabric supply is diverse, but limited in quantity and i feel like it is such a custom order and the client should know what i have available. So - if you are interested in obtaining your own embroidered hand-made stockings and also don't inhabit that planet of all the time in the world either email me at carleekajsa (at) gmail (dot) com or convo me in our shop and i can work it out for you - show you what i have available. I can crank these out within the week, so you can have them displayed for *most* of the season - plus you will have them for years to come!

These are dubbed my labor stockings from now on...although...most handmade goodness is indeed a labor of love in its own right, right?