I've mentioned elsewhere that my sister gave me a big bolt of pale blue felt. I like saturated colors as a rule: deep royal purple, brilliant fusica, lime green, bright orange—and though I like turquoise, teal and cobalt well enough, I wasn't that crazy about this color, so I made stockings out of it to get rid of it.

But as so often happens when I start in on a despised color to ‘get rid of it’ I begin to see its possibilities and subtle charms; and so it is here. By the time I got to this stocking I realized it was a great color to showcase winter themes like snowflakes or cardinals—the one co-ordinating perfectly, the other punching up the red.

This is one of two stockings made concurrently with the scrap applique technique for the image, and I really like this look.

So now I've decided I like the color, and the stockings made with it—some five pieces finished or in progress at the current time—represent nearly half of my output, with pink a distant second at two pieces.

This piece has an innovation the scrap edging. I wasn't thrilled with the strap, which I finally made this year (the rest has been done for at least 2 years) and for which I had high hopes, but, sometimes, I just have to call it done and move on. Otherwise I'd never get finished. (Well, strictly speaking the strap needs some tassels, but I need to borrow it back to put ’em on. I have one that would be just perfect, which just goes to show that sometimes, it's okay to make things without knowing how they'll be used—I made this tassel several years ago, without any idea of its eventual home...)

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.