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Instead of hanging her holiday stockings by the chimney, Joan Heeren’s Christmas stockings cover an entire wall of her home on Northview Drive.
Each of the 33 stockings represents a family member (including one dog) and provides visitors a small snapshot into Heeren’s family tree.
Each 18-inch stocking was carefully cut from white felt and hand-decorated with beads and sequins featuring a holiday theme. Santa Claus appears the most often.
“My son, David, thinks he has been cheated with only a tree and a present on his,” she said.
Heeren began crafting the one-of-a-kind stockings for her family decades ago and through the years has added the smaller four-inch stockings to represent the grandchildren’s spouses and her great-grandchildren.
Her most recent addition of a three-inch stocking is for her two-month-old great-grandchild, named Ella Joan in her honor. Its design is of a blonde-haired angel.
Heeren doesn’t recall the exact year she saw the bead-and-sequin-designed mailbag of her late husband Marlyn’s cousin, but the look of the cut felt, decorative beads and sequins appealed to Heeren, who decided to create the look on holiday stockings.
After she made stockings for each family member, Heeren began making stockings for other people for $40 each.
In more than 45 years, the 87-year-old hasn’t kept track of the number of stockings she has made for others but estimates the number in the thousands.
“I am not doing it for the money. I do it for my sanity — for something to do,” Heeren said. “People think I am crazy.”
Hours are spent sitting at her dining room table, cutting colored felt for the holiday decorations and delicately sewing the miniscule beads backed with shiny flat sequins to the colored felt.
As her grandchildren arrived, the designs became three dimensional with the addition of cotton batting between the felt design and the cutout stocking.
The stocking Heeren recalls with the most fondness is the one that started the whole stocking-making pastime.
“My very first stocking is my favorite,” she said. “Because it was the first and it was very simple.”
That first stocking features a sequined holiday tree at its center with a Bible and angel at the top and a toy train and house with smoke coming out of the chimney at the bottom. Glittery stars frame the stocking that features the name “Heeren’s” across the top.
All the other family stockings that came later match the initial Heeren stocking: 18 inches long, made from white felt, names across the top and outlined in tiny gold stars.
“They all have to have beads and sequins to be creative and pretty,” she said.
Even the smaller three-inch stockings are made to look like their larger counterparts.
“I do all the names the same,” she said. “It takes three hours (to just sew) one name.”
However, the similarities of the stockings’ basic look end when Heeren applies the unique holiday design to each stocking.
While Santa Claus is depicted the most often, Jolly Ole St. Nick is doing different tasks such as reading his list, sliding down the chimney or riding a train.
With a closet full of felt pieces and thousands of beads and sequins in her craft drawers, Heeren is set for future projects.
“I hope I get some more orders next year,” she said.