Crazy Patch Stocking

 

I have always loved crazy patch quilting but hadn’t used this technique for several years until I began this project.  Made for my dear friend, my daughter-in-law, it was a perfect diversion from my sewing marathon of baby/children’s items. 

There are so many things I love about doing crazy patch.  I like combining fabric with a variety of textures like silk dupioni, corduroy, velvet, satin.  I can’t think of another kind of sewing that would allow that. 

Adding little snippets of interesting lace, odd buttons, special ribbons and all the decorative stitches available on our sewing machines transforms crazy patch into a potpourri of sewing delights.

Another reason I enjoy crazy patch is the opportunity it gives to personalize to the nth degree.  That is also what I love most about machine embroidery.   But with crazy patch you can incorporate machine embroidery and so much more. 

Last year, Shelly asked if I would make a Christmas stocking for her.  Hanging from their mantle were the  stockings I had made for Laurel and Robert’s first Christmases and the one I had knitted for Ryan when he was a baby.  Shelly’s was the classic red fleece with the white fuzzy cuff and she wanted something more personal.   

The pattern was simply hand drawn on a piece of newsprint, but I do wish I had made the toe a bit longer and the cuff shorter.  The embroideries recognize this stay-at-home mom’s devotion to her husband,her home, her honey haired daughter and tow headed son.  As a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, she has fostered literally hundreds of orphaned squirrels and released them back to nature.  The rooster button acknowledges her habit of rising with or before the sun.

This Christmas season four specially made stocking hang from the mantle.  I hope Santa fills Shelly’s to overflowing.  She must be high on his  “Been Nice” list.  She is a very good wife, mother, daughter-in-law and friend.