Teacher gifts

Now I know it's probably too late to wrap teacher gifts since school is out. . . at least here it is. Anyways, I totally spaced out last week and forgot to post a little (okay mostly big) paper stockings I created for Riley's teachers. I stitched them together  to contain each gift card and gift and decorated away. On top of that, this baby comes with my patterns. I have created two for you. One is the smaller version and the other was cut from a 12" sheet of scrapbook paper. I like double sided because it made cutting with my Pazzles very easy since I only needed to flip the top of the stocking for another pattern.

Here are the patterns:

smaller- http://www.mediafire.com/i/?x25i2bln2pawm21
larger- http://www.mediafire.com/i/?n73rfg83p362hyl

Cut 2 stockings and one top (contract paper). I then stitched lace to the bottom of the "top" (of the stocking). Then I put the three pieces of paper together and started stitching in the upper right corner. Once I got to the upper left corner, I stopped with the needle down and inserted the gifts into the stockings. I actually gave gift cards and Jamberry nail shields to the teachers. If there was a male teacher, well he'd get the smaller version which just held the gift cards. So after I inserted the gifts inside, I continued to stitch them shut at the very top (sewing through three sheets of cardstock).

Now I've had teachers who did not want to open the stockings at all. So I suggest you either lock the stitch before inserting the gifts inside the stocking and leave them open at the top. Up to you. Michael said I needed to come up with a pull tab after the fact of course. Once stitched, I actually added red velvet ribbon on top of my stitching of the lace. My seam allowance was about 1/8" - 1/4".

Well hope you procrastinated on disguising your gift card gifts and can give this baby a whirl. BTW, I used Martha Stewart paper and gave these a Nutcracker theme.