Blue and Orange Christmas Stockings!

A couple of weeks ago, I offered to make Christmas stockings for my nephew and grandson. This will be the first Christmas for both of them. I have been thinking about the design for these stockings for quite some time. I wanted to put a star on them. OK - that seemed reasonable. But then, I realized that I really wanted to screen print the three wise men as well. OK - also reasonable. I pulled out all kinds of fabrics in reds and greens from my stash but nothing seemed right. I decided to paint the fabric, and as I considered my image - I could not escape the fact that red or green was just not going to cut it for this idea.

Yesterday, I painted a sunset sky as the backdrop for the star and wise men. Turned out OK - so I went ahead and fused the foreground - a scrap of hand dyed black. Then, I screen printed the wise men in black and the star in gold.

Today, I layered and quilted the fronts. Then, I put them together with a single layer of fabric for the back of the stocking (I was rather surprised to discover a commercial fabric in the perfect shade of blue and purple - printed with wise men - perfect for the back of the stocking. I bound them and just now finished hand sewing the binding.

Is it OK to have a Christmas stocking that is blue and orange? I really like these stockings, but they might throw a wrench in the traditional holiday decorating scheme. (I used to care about such things back when I went in for holiday decorating - now I begrudge the time it takes to put up a Christmas tree because it is time out of the studio!). I wonder if the boys will someday feel cheated because their stocking does not have a jolly red Santa or green Christmas tree on it.