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When I sat down to stitch this small painted canvas, I knew it was time to put some of the education I had been receiving from my seminar classes to use, even though I stitched this several years before I finally got into a painted canvas embellishment class, just this past May.

I tried to use small stitches because of the scale of the design but I knew I didn’t want to just stitch the entire stocking in tent stitch. I picked threads that would best interpret the areas I was stitching. While Santa’s shirt would in reality be wool because of the outside temperature, I chose cotton floss just to have a little shine since it was a Christmas stocking that wasn’t going to have a lot of glitz and I wanted some shine to it when it hangs on the tree. Since this was a Christmas ornament and I did want some sparkle to it, I chose metallic threads for the fish stringer, fishing line, fish, and stars. I added some blending filament to the floss for the pants to give them a shiny look since they would have been wet. Some of the new threads on the market that give a wet look are too large for this canvas size. 

To personalize my husband’s stocking, I added the band with the name Wally. The top of the painted canvas had the narrow red band at the top of the painted blue background, so I added the white band and another narrow red band to complete the piece.

I could stitch this only when he wasn’t around, and since we’re both retired that’s not often, so I was stitching this right up until a couple of days before Christmas. Therefore, I was forced into finishing it myself rather than having it professionally done. The stocking has become one of my husband’s favorite ornaments and hangs very prominently at the front of our Christmas tree.