Ding-a-ling! Sleigh Bells is the newest addition to our Christmas stocking tapestry kits. For those of you who like to keep count, Sleigh Bells is the ninth Christmas stocking in our range of ‘slightly larger’ Christmas stockings, the other size being a wee bit smaller and more of a traditional boot shape.
Jolly Red’s range of Christmas stocking kits has evolved over a period of more than twenty years. During that time we’ve adopted various colour palettes, largely depending on the theme of the design or the general mood while we are absorbed in creating the designs.
For a while we’ve wanted to add another bright and vibrant Christmas stocking to our range, so decided to start work on a new interpretation of our popular Silent Night Christmas stocking. Sleigh Bells is stitched in a calm and chalky palette and is itself another version of Dreaming of Christmas. Dreaming of Christmas was our first ever Christmas stocking which we designed a long time ago, in the year 2000. For those of us who grew up in the ’60s (or earlier) the year 2000 still sounds like a space age year!
After some tinkering and trying out all the colours together, Sleigh Bells emerged – in glorious technicolour!
It’s lovely to see our Christmas stocking designs together so here are eight of our larger sized Christmas stockings all in a festive group. From top row left we have Animal Ark, Toy Box, Christmas Alphabet, Angels and Fairytale. Below them are Cats and Dogs, Sleigh Bells and Silent Night…the adorable Owls didn’t quite make it for the photoshoot. They must have been too cosy up in their oak tree!
Why another version of Silent Night? Every day we chat with Jolly Redders on the phone, and they sometimes call for advice on which stocking to stitch next. Quite often, people have stitched a particular design and want to do it again but tweak it in some way and make it a bit different for the latest addition to their family.
As Silent Night is such a popular design it seemed the obvious design to start with to provide a new colourway. Look closely and you’ll notice lots of changes as we haven’t just switched colours. We’ve introduced a donkey and moved lots of things around. If you’ve stitched Silent Night already, Sleigh Bells could well be your next ‘similar but different’ project.
Complete kit or canvas only? If you are a prolific stitcher with tons of wool from previous projects, you can enjoy using it up on a Christmas stocking printed canvas.
How to order Go to Jolly Red’s website and click on the Christmas category. Choose your favourite design – the Owls will demonstrate, below – and you will be presented with two options: you can order the complete tapestry kit with printed canvas and all the wool OR you can opt for the canvas only option and stitch through your wool stash.
Note If you order the printed canvas only, we stil include all the necessary charts to complete the name panel and the symbols reference chart as a guide.
Ordering background wool or specific shades We are happy to supply you with specific colours that you may need to stitch a printed canvas. It could be that you have lots of single skeins of wool but not enough of one colour to cover a larger area. Perhaps you find one colour of the design completely irresistible an definitely want to use it, such as the lovely bright blue that we’ve used for the sky in Sleigh Bells.
Our Making up Service A big thank you to everyone who has sent in a Christmas stocking for making up this year. Sarah has been busy throughout the year, so thank you for not waiting until October to send your canvases in or we’d never manage. We’ll be working through our last few batches of stockings in the next fortnight, and hoping that the babies who have been expected to make a November appearance don’t leave it too late!
Our very best wishes as always,
Kelly and the Jolly Red ladies x
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