The Life of Jesus Advent Calendar - Day 1: The Birth of Jesus Christ

Introduction

For six years, I made a set of Christmas Stockings for the children in my church to gift to them at Christmas. Each year was different, and my aim was to work through the life of Jesus to show the children the relevance of Christmas to the rest of the Bible story. If I stuck to one stocking a year, this advent calendar wouldn't be seeing the light of day yet, but I've taken my recent free time and put it to good use. My hope was to create a template for others to purchase and make their own, but I haven't quite managed that yet! I am working on it though, so watch this space!

Assembling your stockings

Before we look at the scene on this stocking however, lets take a quick look at how to assemble the stockings themselves. I found myself cutting out all the stocking shapes and trims in one go. I also took my 2m of green ribbon and cut it into 24 strips of approx. 8cm each. I singed the edges of the ribbons a little just to stop them from fraying.

I attached the ribbons to the back pieces of stocking in one sitting, and then added the stocking trims to the front pieces in a few sittings. I position the trim so that it overhangs the top of the stocking by about a centimetre, and secure it in place with back stitch. I continue the backstitch all the way round the trim even where it isn't securing it to the red felt, just to give it a nice appearance from the front.

This one went a bit wonky on me, but you get the idea.

Don't attach the backs to the front of your stockings just yet - it's much easier to stitch on your motifs when you have full access to the front stocking piece only!

There are full instructions and more pictures in my digital template, available on Etsy.

Day 1 Nativity Scene

While traditional advent calendars are looking forward to the birth of Christ, that's precisely where mine begins. Part of me wants to create another advent calendar which ends here, including Old Testament scenes that point forward to Christ, but that's a project for another day. I wanted to begin here, rather than end, to show the relevance of the incarnation to the rest of the Gospel narratives, and the start of Acts. I wanted to encourage children to see that the baby Jesus we celebrate being born grew into the man who died for our sins, who was resurrected by God his heavenly Father, and who gave his people the Holy Spirit to give them the strength to do his work on earth.

This stocking is pretty straight forward. Bear in mind when you're cutting out your templates, that Joseph and Mary face a certain direction, so to match the image above you'll need to make sure you put the templates face down on the felt before drawing around them. This is just to avoid your pencil markings showing on the front.

Make sure you lay out your felt pieces first, so you can figure out in which order you will need to stitch them down. In this case, I would stitch the stable, then the star, then Joseph, Mary, and secure Jesus by stitching the manger down over him. There are suggestions on how to stitch the detail onto these in my template.

The stable will sit quite close to the edge of your stocking. The star might also overhang the edge of your stocking, but don't worry about this, it adds a nice detail. If you try to avoid stitching the star down onto the stocking i.e., stitch it only onto the stable, you can then hold it out of the way easily when you're doing your blanket stitch.

You can watch a brief video of this stocking being assembled on my Facebook or Instagram.

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