Make Your Own Easy-Peasy Christmas Stocking

Don’t buy, DIY! Give an ancient pillowcase and a thrifted jumper a new lease of life by using these easy-to-follow instructions to transform them into a Christmas stocking. Sure to become a treasured heirloom, hang it from a bedpost or decorate your mantle and wait for Saint Nick to fill it full of goodies.

These Winter wonders were sewn for us by craft connoisseur, Catherine Tough. Catherine is one of the UK’s leading design-makers and her delightfully patterned socks, woolly hats, scarves, slippers, homeware and much, much more are really something to covet. Thanks Catherine!

• A couple of pillowcases
• An old jumper, ideally with a nice texture or festive pattern
• Bondaweb or similar double sided iron-on adhesive
• Ribbon
• Pins
• Paper for your template
• Iron
• Sewing machine

Draw out your stocking shape on a piece of paper and cut it out (ours is 55cm top to bottom and 20cm wide).

Iron your pillowcase, then keeping the fabric nice and flat, pin on the template making sure to position it to get two whole stocking sections.

Now it’s time to think about your design, we chose to personalise our stockings with an initial and some festive stars. Take your contrast fabrics and a piece of Bondaweb and iron the Bondaweb to the reverse of the fabric remembering to leave the paper on. You can now draw the design and cut it out (the Bondaweb will stop the fabric from fraying and give you nice, clean edges).

Plan out the design remembering to leave room for your knitted top.

To create the knitted top of your stocking, cut out two sections from your jumper just wider than your stocking sections (our section was 15cm high). Try and find two good cast off edges to give a neat finish to the bottom of the knitted section.

Now pin the wrong side of the knitted fabric to the wrong side of the stocking and sew them together.

Fold the knitted fabric over so that it's on the good side of the stocking fabric and press the top hem. Do this for both stocking sections.

Take your Bondawebbed shapes and iron them into place. To make your stocking extra special, do a zigzag stitch around the shape using matching or contrasting thread.

Place the two good sides of your stocking together, pin and sew around them. Remove your pins and trim off any excess fabric

Now, take two lengths of ribbon or tape long enough to make a bow and sew them to the inside of the stocking.

Turn your stocking inside out and press into shape.

Hang them up and wait for Santa!