A Stocking for Jason

This is the first Christmas that our son, Jason, won't be with us. He's the rookie at his job and it's his scheduled day to work. Plus, as he did on Thanksgiving, he volunteered to work a double so one of the guys with kids can be home with his family.

Since he has his own apartment now, complete with electric fireplace, I decided to make him a Christmas stocking to hang up there. The first Christmas I was married I made stockings for my husband and I and cut out matching fabric for several more stockings so we would have enough for however many kids came along. As each son was born, I sewed up another stocking and added his name. Those first stockings were pretty crude. I have a nice stocking pattern now from my days selling at craft fairs in the 90's, but the kids won't let me make new ones for the house. They still want those old stockings. So, I'll hang up all the old stockings here and send Jay the new one I made for him.

This new stocking came from a panel I bought at my LQS. It's part of the In From the Cold line by Kate Spain.

I quilted and lined my version to add my own touch. I used white thread to quilt it, which looked fine on the aqua section but not so great on the red section:

Did you know you can "color" your thread? Since I didn't like the way the white thread looked, I "colored" it red using a Pigma red marker:

Much better now! I wouldn't recommend doing that on a whole quilt, but on this little stocking that won't be washed, it was fine. Yeah, it took a while, but not longer than it would have taken to pick all that white thread out and quilt it again with red thread!

I'm going to get it in the mail to Jay this week. We'll be missing him, but hopefully this will remind him of home.