I want to make a beautiful christmas stocking for dd. Trouble is, I'm inept at crafty stuff and don't even know what to google for...

[mololoko]

So help me please!

I have got some red velour fabric (an old dressing gown), and a furry top from a santa's hat. I can make the basic stocking from that.

I'd like to decorate it with her name (can I get some sort of sew on letters?) and something cute or pretty - I'm looking for sew on patches of reindeers or snowflakes or something. Where would I find those?

Any other tips greatfully received

There was a bit on Kirstie's Homemade Christmas about stocking making so might be worth looking on Channel4.com? She did something with wundaweb to get a reindeer felt cut out onto it.

thanks Ava... have found that on 4OD so will have a look.

any other ideas from anyone?

I have just made three for my DS's, admittedly I am quite crafty but a good tip from me is to use christmas cookie cutters to draw round, for instance I cut out a mixture of woodland animals (ikea cutters) and hearts, stars, and christmas trees in cream felt (from an old jumper that shrunk) onto my red stocking shapes.

You could use bondaweb but copydex glue is the best for glueing fabric and you can also glue buttons etc. on for extra detail, I embroidered simple snowflakes with cream tapestry wool and just glued on initials cut out of felt rather than the whole names.

Pinking shears make an attractive zig zag edging to the cut outs. Don't use more than three colours (mine are red/cream/lightbrown tweed, what I had in my sewing box), infact only two colours looks really good, less is more, if in doubt leave it out! you can always go back and stick more stuff on later.