Easy Knit Christmas Stocking - Beginner Friendly Flat Knitting!

1. Introduction: Hello, everyone. My name is Madeleine from Knitting House Square and today I have a knitting tutorial for you. I've been creating knitting tutorials for the past three years or so and this is one I've always wanted to create. I've done things like scarves, hats, tank tops, the whole range of things, but I've always wanted to create a beginner stocking pattern. What's great about this project is first, it's knit flat. There's no need to knit around. That makes it perfect for beginners or intermediate knitters who are just looking for a fun, quick, and easy project. The next great thing about this project is that it's knit out of bulky weight yarn. This makes it an incredibly fast knit. What I'm going to teach you throughout this course is first, all the different components you need to be able to knit a stocking. We're going to start with a cast on, then we're going to knit all the way through the leg of the stocking, we're going to work a small heel turn, work through the foot, our toe decreases, cast-off, and then I'm going to show you the seaming technique that I used to create this really nice hidden seam. So these make the perfect projects for either decorations that are in the house, like I have them displayed here, or holiday gifts, they're the perfect size to fill them up with lots of goodies. I also hope that you're going to upload one of your first projects when you're all finished, so that way we can see each other's finished stockings. Let's get started. 2. Materials & Class Project: The way this class is structured, each different video tutorial corresponds to a different part of the stocking. For example, we start with a cast on. I'm going to be showing you how to cast on the appropriate number of stitches and how to work the next stitch. That way you can work all the way through the center portion of the stocking. Then next up, I'll show you the heel turn. That's devoted to its own video as well. That way if there's any one particular place in the video you want to focus on, you can find that specific tutorial. First, I'm going to start off by showing you the exact materials I used to create my project. The materials in this project include a US 13 or nine millimeter circular knitting needle. The knitting needle I'm going to be using here is actually a circular knitting needle, even though the project is knit flat. The reason for this is that I find it just to be easier to use a circular knitting needle and I recommend you have a chord that's at least 24 inches long, anything longer than that would work out perfectly, two stitch markers, and it can be difficult to find stitch markers to fit on such a large knitting needle size. I like to do, is I just take pieces of waste yarn, and just tie it into little loops. One tapestry needle and two schemes of the Wool-Ease thick and quick yarn. Now if you're looking for a comparable yarn, this one is a super bulky or size six yarn, and it recommends a size US 13 or nine millimeter knitting needle. Each scheme here comes with 87 yards or 80 meters. The stocking itself measures approximately seven inches across or 14 inches in diameter, and then a total of 17 inches from the top of the stocking where it's folded over down to the toe point. 3. Cast-On & Stocking Leg: Now we'll start off with a cast on. All I have in front of me is my circular knitting middle and my yarn. To begin, I'm just going to unwind a bit of yarn to begin with, so probably about a yard of yarn. Then I'm going to look for a location about eight inches in from the edge. Now once I find that location, I'm going to put a slip knot here. The way I create a slip knot is I'm going to take this piece of yarn late over my left hand, so the tail or the end of the piece of yarn is closest to me, and the actual ball of yarn is coming off the back. Then I'm going to grab onto the strand with my bottom three fingers. Going to take the strand of yarn, go back behind my pointer finger, underneath towards myself, up the front, back behind down to the bottom again, towards myself, up to the front, back behind down to the bottom again. Now I'm going to grab onto this other strand with my bottom three fingers as well. Now when I look at my pointer finger, I essentially have like two-and-a-half loops on my pointer finger. I am going to create a slip knot here, is I'm just going to rearrange these loops. First I'm going to take the second loop, and I'm going to move it up over the first loop. Now I'm going to take that new second loop, and I'm going to move that one up over the first loop. Now I'm going to take that new second loop again, and this time I'm going to slide it off my finger. When I slip it off my finger there, I just created a slipknot, so I can pull on this side with the tail and make it a little bit bigger. But there's my slipknot. Now I'm going to take my slipknot, and I'm going to put it onto one of my knitting needle points. Now it doesn't matter which one, either one of them is perfect. Going to slide that on with knitting needlepoint going basically like from the right over towards the left, pull on my tail to tighten that on. That is a slipknot and that actually does count as our first stitch. We already cast on one stitch. Now for the next part of the cast on, I'm just going to move my other knitting needlepoint over here to the side, so it doesn't get the way. I like to hold onto my knitting needle that I'm casting onto it with my right hand, and then hold on to that stitch that's on that knitting needle, the pointer finger that way it doesn't slide off anywhere. Now I'm holding onto this knitting needle with my right hand and with my left hand, I'm going to take my left hand, I'm going to put it behind the working yarn or the yarn attached to the ball of yarn, and again, I'm going to grab on to adjust that strand with my bottom three fingers. Now it's like I'm creating an L with my thumb and my pointer finger here. What I'm going to do next, is I'm going to take my pointer finger, which is currently behind that strand of yarn. I'm going to go down below that strand towards myself, up the front, then back behind, down to the bottom again, towards myself, up the front. Now I essentially have like 1.5 loops on my pointer finger, and now I'm going to take the knitting needlepoint, I'm going to go underneath that loop, go over the bottom, towards the top of my finger, slide it off my finger, and onto the knitting needle. Now I'm just going to pull on that working yarn, so it becomes snug on the knitting needle. Don't pull it too tight, you just want it snug. Now again, if you still have your hand in this position, you just take your pointer finger. Again, go down below, towards yourself, up the front, back behind, down to the bottom again, up the front. Now again I have one-and-a-half loops on my finger, going to slide that loop off my finger onto the knitting needle. Pull it snug. Now if ever accidentally drop the yarn, that's no problem at all. All we'd have to do here is again, put our left hand behind the strand, grab onto other bottom three fingers. Now again, my pointer fingers behind that strand further away from me. I'm going to go behind the strand towards myself, up the front, back behind, down to the bottom again, up the front. Slide that off my finger and onto the knitting needle. Now I'm going to continue doing this over and over again until I have a total of 34 loops on my knitting needle. Now I've cast on those 34 loops and I just double counted to make sure it was the right number. If you are using the same yarn as me. Just be careful when you're counting because sometimes the yarn likes to separate. Like this is one loop here, but the two actual plies of the yarn are separating from each other there, but that's actually only one loop. If you look right below it, you want to look at each grouping. That would be 1, 1, 1, 1 all the way across. That's just a little hint, If you're using the same yarn as me, so sometimes it likes to separate, so be really careful when you're counting the number of loops on your knitting needle. But now that I have those 34 stitches cast on, what I'm going to do, is I'm going to take my knitting needlepoint. Now instead of pointing over towards the left, I'm going to point it over towards the right. Then I'm going to take my other knitting needle pull. Now I need this one as well. I'm going to hold the one that doesn't have any stitches on it and my right hand, and the one that does have the stitches on it in my left hand. This first row, we're going to be knitting all the way across. First, let me slide these stitches a little bit closer towards the top of the knitting needle here, towards the knitting needlepoint, just make it a little bit easier to work with. Perfect. Now the way the knit stitch works is I'm going to go into the base of the next stitch on my left knitting needle for in this case the first edge, with my right knitting needlepoint, and I'm going to go yarn to the front of that base going from left to right. Then I'm going to wrap my yarn around. I'm going to come up in between my two knitting needles, pull the yarn nice and snug in between the two, then take that knitting needlepoint and push that strand through the loop. Let me show that again because I'm going to work on this next one. I'm going to go into the base of the next stitch, going from left to right. Now I'm going to take my working yarn, come up the center, pull that strand nice and snug in between the two knitting needles, then pull that right knitting needle towards myself, and as I'm doing that, I'm going to pull that loop through the stitch on my left knitting needle. Now I'm going to continue knitting all the way across this row. I'm going to keep on knitting across until there are no stitches left to knit on my left knitting needle. Now that I just completed all those stitches that were on my left-hand knitting needle, I'm ready to begin my next row. The way I began my next row is again, I'm going to flip it so my knitting needles, but the stitches on it is going to be pointed over towards the right, then I'm going to put my knitting needle without any stitches on it in my right hand, grab my knitting needle with the stitches on it in my left hand. I'm set up exactly the same way I was before I be in that first row. That's what you want to make sure you're setup as before you begin any of these rows. The empty knitting needle in your right hand, knitting needle with the stitches on it in your left hand. Now again, I'm going to knit across this row. I'm going to knit across it the exact same way. Here just make sure you aren't knitting with your tail. You're going to be knitting with your working yarn. Again, I'm just going to go into the base of each one of the stitches, wrap my yarn around, pull through. We're going to continue knitting all the way across this row. Now again, I'm finishing up this row. Again, all I have to do is just flip my knitting needle, so it's pointed over towards the right. Grab onto my free knitting needle with my right hand, and now again, I'm ready to begin knitting across again. Now I'm going to continue knitting row after row until my total work measures 13 inches. The way I'm going to measure the 13 inches, is I'm going to measure from the bottom edge, so basically where I cast on up until the base of the knitting needle. In that total length is 13 inches. I'll come back, and I'll show you how to put in the heel. 4. Heel Turn: Now, I have continued knitting all the way up through the leg or the cuff portion of this stocking and I'm ready to place my heel. I'll be placing my heel on the first half of my stitches. For mine, I'm going to be starting with the row where I go across and my cast on tail, that little eight-inch tail is down here in the bottom right corner. That's the side I have facing towards myself as I'm going to begin knitting across. For the first row, we're going to knit across half of our stitches. We're going to knit 17. Now that I've knit those first 17 stitches, I'm going to stop in the middle of this row and I'm going to turn my work. Now when I turn my work, my working hand has come out my left knitting needle here. What I'm going to do next is I'm going to do what's called making a double stitch. How I do this is I'm going to take this first stitch on my left knitting needle and I'm going to slip it right onto my right knitting needle. I'm just going to slip it right onto there without twisting it at all. Now I'm going to take this tail, and I'm going to pull it up over my work. When I tug it up, it's now going to pull like that bottom bump up so it appears like two strands. I just pull it up and back behind. Now essentially I have turned that single loop into two loops, that's why they call it a double stitch. Now that I've done that, I'm going to knit 15. When I knit those 15 stitches, I'm obviously left where there's one stitch over here on my left hand knitting needle and here I'm going to turn my work. Now at the beginning of this row, again I'm going to make a double stitch. I'm going to pass that first stitch from my left to right knitting needle. Now I'm going to take my working hand and I'm going to pull it up over behind my work. Now I'm going to knit across to one stitch before that double stitch, essentially I'm going to knit 14. I just knit that 14 stitch and I know I'm in the right place because the next stitch I would've worked on this left knitting needle is my double stitch, now again here I'm going to turn my work. I'm going to make a double stitch and then I'm going to knit across to one stitch before this double stitch so I'm going to knit 13. Down in the pattern that you find linked to this tutorial is going to be all the different row counts for how many times we repeat this. Essentially we're going to keep on going further and further inwards and keep on creating more and more double stitches until we end up with five stitches in the center. We're going to finish after a mega double stitch knit five. Then I'll show you the next step, which is going to be basically the center of the heel. Now I've just completed that row that was make a double stitch knit five and then I turned my work. Next up what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be doing the two rows from me placing my stitch markers. In this first row where I place the stitch marker, the first thing it has me do is make a double stitch. First I'm going to pass the first stitch, pull the yarn over to the back, then I'm going to knit four. Now I'm going to place one of my stitch markers and I'm going to place it on my right knitting needle and as we knit across the rest of this row, what it notes here is that anytime you encounter a double stitch, you want to knit the two loops together. If you're having trouble seeing where the double stitches are, just stretch out your work a bit and they're going to stay grouped together. You can see that this is one double stitch right there. When I knit these together, I'm going to take my right knitting needlepoint into the base of both of those loops at the same time, wrap my yarn around and then pull through. It's just like knitting a single stitch, just now we're taking that right knitting needlepoint from the left to the right into the base of both of those loops. I'm going to work each one of those double stitches together. Now that I've completed knitting across those double stitches, I'm just going to knit across the rest of the row just with the standard knit stitch. Now I'm going to turn my work, on this side of the work, the first thing it tells me to do is knit over to my stitch marker. Now I'm going to pass this stitch marker from a left-to-right knitting needle, knit four and I'm going to place my next stitch marker comes completely at random, I write knitting needle. Now I'm going to finish knitting across this row, again, anywhere I have a double stitch, if I stretch out my work, they're going to stay together. Each one of these double stitches, I want to work together as one stitch, knit the final stitch. Now I'm ready to turn my work again. Now we've completed the first half of the heel and you can see already becoming a little impairment there. We have a little bit of a bump out in our work or this curve knitting needle, that's the first half of the heel. This second half of the heel is what we're about to work. For this portion, now, instead of going inwards and knitting fewer and fewer stitches like we did with the first half, what we're going to be doing is we are going to be expanding outwards and keep on increasing our number of stitches. If I were to draw out how a heel works, the part we just did or the part before that was where we basically start off with our half of the total socks ditches and then we began working inwards. We kept on working inwards until we had that center four stitches that's currently in between our two stitch markers. Now what we're going to do, is we're going to start working outwards. We're into the second half of the heel, and the second half of the heel, it's going to look something like that to match the first half. The way we actually do this is first, I'm going to knit across to my second stitch marker. Now I'm going to pass that stitch marker and I'm going to knit one additional stitch. Now I'm going to turn my work and on this side, the first thing I'm going do is I'm going to make a double stitch. I'm going to pass the first stitch on my left hand knitting needle over to my right hand knitting needle, pull the waste yarn up over to the back and now I can take off this stitch marker. Now I'm going to knit over to my remaining stitch marker. I'm going to slip that stitch marker then I'm going to knit one more stitch. Now I'm going to turn my work. On this side, I'm going to start by making a double stitch, so I'm going to pass that stitch, pull the working hand to the back, take off the stitch marker. Now, this is where I'm going to begin expanding outwards. I'm going to knit over to my double stitch, work my double stitch together as if it were one stitch, then knit one additional stitch. Basically going to knit six, so I'm going to knit four regularly, then work my double stitch together, work one more, so a total of six then I'm going to turn my work, make a new double stitch. I'm going to work across to where that previous double stitch was over here. I'm going to knit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and then one additional stitch. Now again, I'll turn my work. Now the way these rows are going to work, is we're going to start off by making a double stitch then we're going to knit across to where the double stitch was on the previous row that we worked. My hands are here, if I stretch out my work, knit that double stitch together, then knit one additional stitch. Turn our work, do the exact same thing. Each time we're going to be increasing by one stitch, the number of stitches we're knitting. Now I'm going to continue working through all the rows noted in the pattern and in the pattern it's going to tell you exactly the number of stitches to work on each trail all the way up through the rest of this heel. Now that I finished putting in my heel, what I'm going to continue doing is knitting row after row until I've knit for an additional 4.5 inches. The way I like to measure the foreign half inches is you can kind of see where the corners of the heel are. I would measure from the corner of the heel again to the base of the knitting needle. When that distance is 4.5 inches, we're ready for the toe decreases. 5. Toe Decreases: Now I'm all ready to begin my toe decreases. Before I begin my toe decreases, I want to make sure I'm on a consistent side of my work. This is especially important if you're knitting more than one of these and you want them all to match. I'm going to begin my decrease row on the side of my work where my heel is over here on the right-hand side. If you're not about to work this row and are still on the opposite side of your work, knit one more rows that you end up on the same side as me. This row incorporates two decreases end. There's a thing called a slip slip knit, and then there's also we would knit two together. I'm going to demonstrate each one of those stitches. First it says knit one. Then there's a series of asterisk. Within the stars it says knit one, slip slip knit, knit 10, knit two together, knit one. Then there's another asterisk. That means I want to repeat what's in that section two times. First let's do the first repeat of it. I'm going to knit one, then I'm going to work what's called a slip, slip knit. I'm going to slip the first stitch as if to knit. I'm not actually knitting it, I'm just putting my right knitting needle into it, sliding it off as if to knit, going to slip the next stitch on my left knitting needle as if to knit again. I didn't knit either of those, I just twisted them. Now I'm going to pass them both back over to my left knitting needle. When I do that, I'm just going to take my left knitting needle and I'm going to put it into the front of both of those stitches. You can either take your right knitting needle out now or you can leave it in. But you want to make sure you're right knitting needle is going into the back of both of those stitches. I'm basically taking this right knitting needle going from right to left behind my left knitting needle into the base of both of those stitches. Now I'm going to wrap my yarn around, going from underneath, then up to the top. I'm going to pull that loop through both of the stitches. That's a slip slip knit. Let me do that one more time. Untwist them real quick. I'm going to slip the first stitch as if to knit, slip the second stitch as if to knit. Now I'm going to pass them both back over to my left knitting needle and I'm going to take my right knitting needle into the back of both of those stitches at the same time. Wrap my yarn around, push through. It just slip, slip then. Now I'm going to knit 10. Now next up, I'm going to work what's called a knit two together. We're going to knit two together, I'm going to take my right knitting needle point and I'm going to go into the base of the next two stitches on my left knitting needle. Again starting at the left, going over towards the right. I'm making sure my knitting needle point goes into the first stitch and the second stitch there. Then I'm going to wrap my yarn around, pull through. If I show that one more time, I'm going to take my right knitting needle point and go into the base of the next two stitches going from left to right, making sure my knitting needle went through both of them. Wrap my yarn around, going from underneath, then up to the top, push through. Now it says knit one. Now I begin the repeat again. So I'm going to knit one. Then work a slip, slip knit. I'm going to slip the first stitch from the left knitting needles off to knit. The next stitch from my left-right knitting needles off to knit. Pass them both back over to my left knitting needle, then knit them together through the back. Take my right knitting needle into the back of both of those stitches, wrap my yarn around, pull through. Knit 10 again. Now I have another knit two together. I'm going to take my right knitting needle point in the base of the next two stitches as if to knit, wrap my yarn around, pull through, knit one. That's the end of my second repeat. Now I need to knit the final stitch. Now that we've completed that first decrease row, we're going to turn our work. Now on this opposite side of our work, we're just going to knit across. That's the way these toe decreases are going to work, is we're going to work one decrease row, then we're going to turn our work, work one row, just knitting. I'm going to continue to work both of these rows over and over again for the number of rows specified in the pattern. 6. Kitchener Stitch: I just completed my last decrease row. I just worked from right to left across this row. Here I'm not going to turn my work at the end. What I'm going to do instead, is I'm going to pull on my knitting needle, the one with the stitches towards the end of it over here with my left knitting needle so that all of my work ends up on the cord. I'm going to count into the center location. Once I find that center location, I'm going to pinch the cord right there and I'm going to fold my work in half, so that half of it ends up on each knitting needle. Each need a thread in, each one of knitting needles now. When I hold my knitting needles, I'm going to have the one with the working unattached to it further away from me and then my other knitting needle closest to me. It' like they're on a flat plane that's parallel to the table. I'm going to call the one closest to me, my front knitting needle, the one furthest away from me, my back knitting needle. This is the point where we're going to cut our yarn. We do want to leave a fairly long tail here. I always like to have extra, probably about 24 inches, then cut my yarn. Now I'm going to thread my tapestry needle with that tail and now we're going to work this mind off at the toe. The way this bind-offs is going to work is there's a two-stitch setup and then a four-stitch repeat. First for the setup, I'm going to take my tapestry needle and I'm going to thread it through the first stitch or my front knitting needle or the one closest to me, purlwise. I'm going to pull my tapestry needle through as if I were going to purl the stitch. My purl stitch, which go right into the base of a stitch, going from right to left, going to thread the tail through. Now I'm going to go underneath the knitting needle closest to me and into the first stitch on my back knitting needle as if to knit. I'm going to go into the base of that stitch, going from left over the right, and now pull the yarn through. You want to be pulling it fairly snug after each one of these movements that you do. Those were our two setup movements, and now we're going to do the repeat. The repeat is, I'm going to take my tapestry needle through the first stitch of my front knitting needle as if to knit. I'm doing it knitwise, going from left to right into the base of the stitch. Now I'm going to slide that stitch off of my front knitting needle. I'm going to go into my new front stitch on my front knitting needle as if to purl. I'm going to go into the base of that stitch, going from right to left, pull my yarn through. I'm going to leave that stitch on my front knitting needle. Now I'm going to go into my first stitch on my back knitting needle as if to purl. Going right to left into the base, and I make to sure when I do this that my yarn is staying underneath my two knitting needles. If it accidentally goes over, you're going to end up with basically an extra stitch, so you want to leave it underneath. I'm going to slide that first stitch off of my back knitting needle. Now I'm going to go into my new first stitch on my back knitting needle as if to knit. I'm going to leave that stitch on my back knitting needle. That was the four repeat. Let me show one more time. First I'm going to go into the first stitch on my front knitting needle as if to knit. Always trying to make sure I'm pulling them nice and snug too, so I don't end up with any extra yarn. Now I'm going to slide that first stitch off my front knitting needle. Now I'm going to go into my new first stitch of my front knitting needle as if to purl, pull the yarn through, leave that stitch on my front knitting needle. I'm going to go into my first stich on my back knitting needle as if to purl. Slide that stitch off my back knitting needle. Now I'm going to go into my new first stitch on my back knitting needle as if to knit, pull the yarn through and leave that stitch on my back knitting needle. I'm going to put that four-stitch repeat up on the screens that you can read it. It'll also be in the pattern down below. I'm going to continue working that until I've cast off all the stitches. One thing that's important to note is that once you get to these last two stitches, you essentially can't complete a four repeat, right? Because there's no other stitches to thread the yarn through. What you do is you just complete as many of the steps of the repeat as you can. If you don't have a new second stitch or a new first stitch on the front knitting needle, just skip that step and go on to the next step. That's the way I do it. Once I finish binding off all my stitches, I'm going to come back and show you how to seam it up. [MUSIC]. 7. Seaming: Now I've just completed going across that top edge, my toe edge, and completing the Kitchener stitch. Now the next thing I need to do is I need to decide which one I want to be the outside of my stocking. The main portion and the heel part of this stocking is identical on either side. We just have all these quarters bumps going all the way down. Now the toe is the only place that there will be a difference. If I just leave it the way I've just finished my Kitchener stitch, at the top of my toe, I'm going to have a flat portion. So you can see it's kind of like all bumps all the way up through here. Then we get to the toe and there's about three rows of flat. Then the bumps start again, going all the way up the back. Now the alternative is, is we can flip the stocking to the other side. So now when I have it this way, I can see there are bumps all the way up through the toe. The bumps just keep on going. This is the side I prefer to have as the outside of my stocking, so this is the side I'm going to use, but you can use either side. Just flip it so that whichever side you want is on the outside. I have the bumps on the outside now, and now the way I want to arrange my work is I'm going to turn my stocking so that the cuff is closest to me, the toe with a bump side out is furthest away. Now I'm going to open up my stocking and then I essentially want to fold the two edges in towards the center. What this does, is it lines up the two edges I'm about to seam. The way I'm going to seam this is I'm going to start down here, at the stocking opening, and I'm going to sew up towards the toe. When I seam this, I need a large piece of yarn. Here, it's probably about a yard and a half that I have that I'm going to seam with. I'm just going to thread my tapestry needle with one of these ends. Now seaming a stocking can seem really difficult, but I'm just going to show you step-by-step exactly what you're going to be looking for as you pick up a bar from either side. The seaming method I'm about to show you is called mattress stitch. The idea behind mattress stitch is that we're going to go down each edge and I'm going to pick up one stitch in from this side. Then I'm going to the opposite side, pick up one stitch in from this side. I keep on going back and forth to either side. When I begin, I'm just going to pick either side to begin on. I'm going to begin on the right side. I'm going to look for this bottom edge. I'm going to go one stitch in from where this cast on edge is, where that cast on tail. We're just going to thread my needle up, going from the inside of my stocking to the outside. Now I'm just going to leave this tail about eight inches, so I'm not going to pull it all the way through. Now what I'm looking for on either side is, if I stretch out my work, I want to separate out the first stitch in each row. If I pull my work, stretch it out a bit, the first stitch is either going to appear as one of these flat V's or it's going to appear as a bump. This is because we knit every row. It's going to appear differently from row to row. What I'm looking for on either side is I want to stretch out my work, just the edge portion. When I do that, I'm going to be separating the first stitch from the rest of my work. It's easiest to see right right here with this knit stitch. This V right here is one stitch. Then I have this horizontal bar that's right next to it. That would be the bar I'd want to pick up. Now right above this, I have a bar. That bar is my first stitch, just I was knitting on the opposite side there. Here, I want to pick up the bar right next to that first stitch. As I go along the edge, we can see that we're alternating between a picking up these bars that are in the back of the work and picking up the bars that are in the front. I'm going to pick up a bar in the back, bar in the front, bar in the back bar in the front. That's just on one side. Then again, on the other side, I'm going to stretch out my work and I'm going to find the first stitch. If I look down this column, right, I'd have this V, is my first stitch. I pick up this bar that's right next to it connecting those two stitches, then this would be my first stitch right here. I'm going to pick up this bar connecting those two stitches. Again, I have this stitch. Pick up the bar, this one, this one, and I keep on going all the way up. I want to pick up the center of the bar that's connecting the first stitch and the second stitch. Let me show you a few of these. The first few can actually be the hardest to find just because they kind of stay hidden and it's difficult to determine where exactly to start along the edge. When I go over here to the left-hand side, I'm going to go one stitch in. So I'm not going to pick up this outer edge. I'm going to look for my next row, stretch out my work, find the bar, thread that yarn through, my tail out of the way. Now I'm going to go back here to the other side, stretch out my work. This looks like the first bar I have over here so I'm going to pick up that one. Now again, I'm going to go back over here at this side. I just picked up a bar that was next to one of those flat Vs. Next I'm going to pick up this one. Now I'm going to go back over to the opposite side. I just picked up a bar in front, so now I want the bar on back. On this side, again, I just picked up the bar in front, so now I want the next one, that's kind of hidden behind. Now I've got a little ways in. What I'm going to do is, first, I'm going to hold onto my tail of the stitch I'm seaming over the yarn I'm seaming with right now, and I'm going to pull on the other side of the yarn. Oops, holding the wrong tail. Okay, perfect. So when I pull on that, it tightens up that full seam. So in the inside of my work, I can see that one stitch that I now took to the inside of my work. Now it become very hidden on the outside of my work. Once I go about two inches or so, I always tug on this yarn again just to tighten up the ones I've previously done. Now I'm going to continue going all the way down this edge. Again, alternating each side, one to the other, and picking up each bar, ones stitch it, all the way up until the toe. Then lastly, I'll come back and show you how to weave in those ends. 8. Weave in Ends & Add Loop: Now the final step is going to be to weave in all my ends. To weave in the ends, first I'm just going to be starting with where I finish up the seam. That'll be the first one I weave in. I'm going to find the location where that seem ended and then I'm just going to take my tapestry needle which still has my thread on it or my yarn on it. I'm going to thread it right into the inside of my stocking where that seam ends. Now all my other seams are already on the inside. Now am going to turn my work inside out. Whenever am weaving in an end, the first thing I check for is there something I can weave it into that's really easy? In this case, because we're weaving in basically the yarn that we used for the seam, what I can do is I can use like the bulkiness of the seam to help me weave in this end really quickly. I'm just going to take my tapestry needle and go right into where the seam is. This is like my edge with my seam right here and I'm just going to thread it back and forth, moving up my seam. I'll probably go for about an inch or two, then I'm going to cut my yarn. That's probably one of the easiest seams to weave in. Now next up, let's look at these two, for example. This is where I switched my balls of yarn, so I ran out of one and joined a new one. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to tie a single knot and now I'm going to weave in my ends. I'm going to weave in one end, going towards the right, I'm going to weave in the other end going towards the left. What I want to do is I want to trace an existing stitch. For instance, let's say I was following this strand right here. First I'm going to weave underneath this loop. Then the next place this one goes is it goes behind both of these two strands. It goes up, back behind these two. Now it comes back down through, up to the next one, and then it goes behind the two strands again and then back down through. That's really good enough for weaving in that end so now I'm just going to cut my yarn. Now I'm going to weave in the one going the opposite direction, and here again, just redo my tapestry needle and I'm going to trace out another stitch. Now I'm going to cut that end. Now again, I have this one down here at the top of my toe where I work the Kitchener stitch, so I'm going to weave in that end. Then I'm also going to weave in the cast on beginning edge and then also the beginning of my seaming edge up here at the top. These two again, are ones that are fairly easy to weave into this seam. The last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add a hook to hang it from. What I have here is again my tapestry needle and then about 12 inches of my yarn. I folded my stocking in half here so that the heel is on the side. when we seamed up, it was flat like this, with the heel on one side, the front of the stocking on the other, so you just want to fold it in half the other way. Now one side won't have a seam on it, the other side does have the seam on it. When I think of the way it's going to hang, I like to think of it hanging where the side with the seam isn't going to be on the outside. I'm going to hang it up here along this corner edge, no seam on the front. Now I'm going to take my strand of yarn, thread it on my tapestry needle, and now I go in a few rows here. Let's say I go into this one and the one right below it. But one end through. Now am going to take the other end. Go one stitch over, thread that through. Now that I have them both threaded through, again, I throw them through two separate rows that they aren't pulling too much on a single stitch. Now I'm going to tie the two ends together. In this way, if you ever want to shorten it or lengthen it, you can always do that. Now I have a little hook to hang my stocking from. 9. Conclusion: Thank you so much for joining me today, so I take you step-by-step through how to make your own stocking. I hope you've enjoyed this course and be sure to upload a photo of your finished class project. Also, if you enjoyed this class, be sure to click the Follow button next to my image. That way you'll be updated anytime I upload a new class. Also, be sure to check out the other classes I already have available here on Skillshare. I'll see you next time.