geeked-out stocking

In my family, we all had our own, special Christmas stockings. My dad had an extra long, fuzzy red one; my mom had her blue one with an angel from when she was a child; my sister had a quilted one with a gingerbread man; and I had a quilted one with a rocking horse. Zach has a standard, store-bought, fuzzy red and white one. He used gold puffy paint to write his name on it. Even though it's personalized a bit, I always think it's sad. I feel like everyone should have a super special Christmas stocking. So this year, I decided to make Zach a new stocking for Christmas. I wanted it to show his interests, so, of course, I thought movies/TV. I found some fabrics for various Marvel and DC characters and a few related to Doctor Who (Tardises and Daleks). But he has so many fandoms, I didn't know which one to pick. Then I found this fabric from spoonflower.com. They have a whole search category for "geek"! 

This has images from Doctor Who, Star Trek, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars, and more that, I'm sad to admit, I can't identify. I bet Zach can, though! I ordered two "fat quarters", one for the front and one for the back of the stocking. I got some plain green fabric for the lining and used some red micro-fleece leftover from a long-ago project for the cuff. 

I found various instructions online, but none had a pattern, so I traced my stocking, then made it an extra inch around all sides and about four inches taller. Initially, I drew the pattern on old newspaper, but that wasn't big enough for the expansions I wanted to do, so I used that pattern to trace onto part of a cardboard box. I used that to trace onto all the fabric. I also traced out some interfacing I found in my fabric drawer, to give the whole thing a little more substance, though after the fact, it probably wasn't really necessary.

I mostly used these instructions from Centsational Girl, but I found them a bit lacking when I got to adding the cuff. I'll talk more about that later. Following these, I sewed the geek fabric, the interfacing, and the green fabric together, right-side out, with a 1/4" seam. 

Then I sewed the front and back pieces together, right-sides facing each other, with a 1/2 inch seam.

 
Next came the tricky part -- adding the cuff. I found this DIY tutorial that had a little more info on sewing the cuff, but it still wasn't super descriptive. I think I did this part three times. Then I decided it would be best to sew the hanger loop inside the cuff, so I had to pull out part of it a fourth time. I started by cutting my fabric twice as wide as I wanted the cuff to be and a little more than twice as long as the stocking was wide. Then I folded it in half, with the good side out, and fit it around the stocking. This was kind of tricky due to the seams in the stocking. I just did the best I could. Then I sewed the cuff to the stocking. When I got to the side where the hanger loop would go, I stuck that in to sew it between the stocking and the cuff. I know that's not very good description of the process, but it's the best I can do from memory at this point.

Finally, I had a finished stocking! Zach thought it was cool; however he couldn't identify all the symbols, so I'm not sure he should be allowed to keep it :-p He liked that it's bigger than his old stocking, though he thinks that now he gets to have both. I told him one stocking full of candy is enough!