It’s the last days before Christmas and I decided to go on a hunt for Bill Cosby sweaters.
Why? Well, we needed new Christmas stockings. I’d looked online and looked in stores and I just wasn’t excited about my options. I knew I wanted to make something, but didn’t feel like I had the time. The past few years I’ve tried to talk myself into knitting some great stockings for us, buuut.. I.. can’t. I just can’t. I’m not sure why, because I like to knit.
I think it’s because when I realize I need to knit us some stockings (the day after Thanksgiving when the Christmas decor goes up), there isn’t enough time to get it done. So, then I’m faced with starting the stockings without the gratification of finishing them before Christmas OR starting them after Christmas. And let’s face it, after Christmas there’s just no way.
So, I saw this idea on pinterest. You take a sweater and make a stocking out of it! Perfect! So I did. Here’s my tutorial.
Start with a sweater. The more Bill Cosby-ish the better. You know you know someone with these kinds of sweaters. Gently tell them it’s time to say goodbye to the 80′s. And their sweaters. (This one is not a Bill Cosby sweater, obviously. I forgot to take pics of my best ones. Figures.)
Turn it inside out and use an old stocking as a pattern. Or free hand one. Then, trace it on the sweater.
Next, pin around your trace. Then get your machine out and sew on your line. Sew first, cut second, in order to keep it from coming unraveled, especially with a knit sweater (which was all of what I did, except this one).
Get your scissors and cut the thing out.
Turn it right side out. And viola. Presto. Stocking almost complete.
All you need is the loop at the top to hook it up with. Take a strip of sweater, fold it and sew it.
Then, sew it to the top of the stocking. Either by hand or with the machine, whatever you feel like and whatever your machine can manage, since some of the best sweater stockings are wool and really really thick. I opted by hand this time round.
Here are all the stockings I made in the eleventh hour. Finished on Christmas Eve Eve, as we say.
And here are my family’s new stockings. Hung with care and properly stuffed.
My mom says that I can “trick them out” more each year. Wha?? Hi Mom, I’m Abigail, nice to meet you. We’re from Iowa, in case you forgot, and “trick them out” isn’t in our vocab. Oh well.
And that concludes my Bill-Cosby-Sweater-Stocking-Project-of-Christmas-Eve-Eve-2011. See you next year.
