LONDON (AP) — Searching for a gift for that special royal watcher in your life?
How about a Christmas stocking made from the drapes of King Charles III’s Sandringham estate and handstitched by a sewing circle at Dumfries House in Scotland, where the king’s charitable foundation works to preserve traditional skills and crafts?
Deftly tugging their needles through the royal fabric, members of the Dumfries House Sewing Bee recently put the finishing touches on the festive decorations, which will be auctioned off to raise money for the King’s Foundation. While the rain splattered against the windows of the 18th century mansion south of Glasgow, the women chatted amiably, hot drinks by their sides.
“It’s been absolutely great,” said Christine Wilson, 72, a retired finance officer. “It’s a great atmosphere in the sewing bee, a great group of friends, and we do a lot for charities as well.”
Wilson and her friends have created 25 of the stockings, each of which will be numbered to make them unique. The final stocking, No. 25, will be given to the king as a Christmas gift.
Proceeds of the auction, which runs through midnight on Dec. 12, will support the work of the foundation, which provides training in practical skills such as hospitality and animal husbandry for more than 15,000 young people each year.
“We hope that whoever is lucky enough to win one of the stockings at auction will pass it down as a family heirloom to be treasured for decades to come,” said Sarah McClymont, the lead tutor for the foundation’s Future Textiles initiative.
This is the third auction held by the foundation in recent years.
The project began in 2023, when the charity created a range of kimono jackets from curtains that once hung in Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.
In 2024, students from the furniture school at Highgrove Gardens, part of the king’s private residence in western England, crafted footstools upholstered with fabric from still more curtains that once hung at the palace and castle.
There’s no need to worry about the royal windows being stripped bare, though. Buckingham Palace alone has 760 windows, creating a near-limitless supply of gently used fabric.