Christmas Stockings from Jeans - an upcycle tutorial

This week's clothes upcycle is a start on some early Christmas sewing!

I've seen some great upcycled Jeans Christmas Stockings around so thought I'd try some out with the pile of jeans I still have to upcycle for the school carnival stall.

I decided to make some mini treat stockings that could be used for filling with small gifts at Christmas parties, at the end of Christmas term at school or even perhaps for pet stockings! The finished stockings using my template are about 22 cm (8.5") tall.

They are super simple to make, here's how.

You will need a pair of old jeans - or denim offcuts, some white fabric for the top of the stockings - I used an old sports shirt; and finally some fabric scraps and fusible webbing for the applique pictures.

First cut 2 stocking pieces from the denim - one facing each way. You can either draw your own or you can download the template I drew here. Also cut 2 rectangles to top the stockings (again on the free template download) and iron some fusible webbing onto the back of the fabric scraps you want to use for your applique. Finally, cut a small piece of the jeans seam to use as a hook to hang the socking up with.

First you need to draw, cut and attach your appliqué to one side of your main stocking piece. I chose a nice simple Santa hat for my first stocking. I also made a Christmas tree, a bell, a star, a snowman and a candy cane. I've also included these on a downloadable template here - but you can always draw your own, or use outlines from old Christmas cards or there are plenty of downloadable outlines available on-line that you can find with a simple Google search.

 I always applique (tight zig-zag) stitch around the pieces after ironing them on as I find that after time the glue tends to come unstuck!

Now you can put your stocking together.

Pin then stitch the two main stocking pieces right sides facing together and stitch around all but the top opening.

Next, the white top. Pin the two white rectangles right sides facing together and stitch along both short sides.

You now have your two stocking pieces ready to put together.

Turn your main stocking right sides out and slip the white pieces over the top. You should have right sides of the white and denim facing and the raw edges lined up around the opening.

Pin then stitch around the top opening.

For the loop to hang the stocking, cut a small section of the jeans seam - about 8 cm (3.25").  Fold this in half and stitch to the back side seam of your stocking.

Finally, turn the top of the stocking in about 1cm (0.5") and stitch all the way around to neaten.

Now you're done!  One mini Christmas treat stocking finished!

I made a few of them all with different appliqué designs.

 The snowman is my favourite!

For the downloadable PDF version of this tutorial, click here.

To see what else I upcycled from clothes for the school carnival stall go here.

And if you liked this tutorial - there are 100+ sewing tutorials for all kinds of projects and all levels of sewing ability on 

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