The tree is decorated and the gifts are wrapped. Next week will be dedicated to food - menu planning, shopping, and baking! Today I'm staying in to finish a few last tasks and monogramming the kids' stockings was priority #1.
My now-adult children have used the same Rudolph and Disney Dalmatian stockings since they were little. Each has a stuffed animal head so it is really tricky (according to St. Nick, of course) adding anything larger than a chocolate bar into the slim leg of the sock. As my darlings got older and I ran out of ideas for little stuffers to tell Santa about, I migrated to adding a gift bag alongside the fireplace to help make things easier.
This year I gave in and decided to purchase larger Christmas stockings once and for all. The kids can save their old sentimental ones for their own children but now there is no way to tell these generic stockings apart. Santa may have a tough time filling them correctly so I excitedly chose to monogram each one. It has been quite a while since I used my Janome embroidery machine but it is so simple to operate I didn't have any trouble at all getting it set up.
I picked red, blue, and green for the initials (not only festive colours but long-time identifiers for each child) and used the beautiful, shiny jewel-tone Marathon threads. I'm so thankful I had a good stash of stabilizers too, knowing I'd need to both adhere the difficult stocking to adhesive sticky-back stabilizer as well as add a topping to the top. The plastic topper stabilizer allows the stitches to sit on top of denser nap fabrics, such as terry cloth or with the stockings, a wooly cuff.
It only takes a few minutes to embroider a single monogram and they turned out great! The first was not quite perfect as I adjusted the tension a wee bit, but it is barely noticeable that a few threads are protruding. I'm quite pleased and excited for the kids to see them when mom Santa fills them on Christmas Eve!
Here's a quick video showing the Janome 350e in action stitching out a monogram. I love the sound it makes!!!