Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Birthday and Halloween

BIRTHDAY
Today is my eldest granddaughter's 5th birthday. I spent Sunday working away on a pair of Hansel and Gretel dolls and their accessories from a panel by Stacy Hsu.


I forget how long it does take to sew and stuff these. They always come out cute though. Here, from left to right, are Mr. Bear, Hansel, Funny Bunny and Gretel with her border print dirndl skirt.


This is the front of their blanket and pillow – at least I declare it to be the front. I layered the blanket  with batting and simply stitched straight lines along the squares of the counterpane. For the pillow I added a bit of batting, and stitched around the Home Sweet Home sign and the central house  to give the pillow a bit more dimension before sewing, turning, and stuffing it. 


Here is the reverse side of the pillow and blanket. The print is very cheerful and colorful. For some reason the vertical lines of the mini-quilt are not visible in the photo but they are indeed there.


This is the whole set completed. They will go with the Lil' Red (3/8/16), Coral Queen of the Sea (5/14/17), and Lil Superheroes (April 14, 2017) I've already given her. My granddaughter will not get Hansel and Gretel today, Wednesday, because the post office was closed Monday due to the Columbus Day holiday. Alas, I'd procrastinated and forgotten to allow for the extra day. UPS was open Monday and I sent it that way; it will get there Friday. At least an Amazon package I sent should arrive today.


I also mailed a book of the fairly tale Hansel and Gretel along with the cloth entourage. I read the book first. Yee gads, what a gruesome tale!  I'd remembered the part about shoving the wicked witch into the oven; but that was OK. After, all she was wicked and deserved it. I had not however remembered how Hansel and Gretel got in that predicament to begin with. The version of the book I found to send, told the tale of her father and stepmother having not enough food to share, so they took the kids out into the woods and deliberately left them there to perish. Nice, huh? Oh well, Autumn likes to watch scary movies with her dad so maybe this will not phase her in the least.


HALLOWEEN
This week I also sewed up some block of the month mini-kits from my guild. There was a choice of  a squat pieced house block, a tall pieced house block, or a short and tall tree pair paper-pieced block. I bought one of each block type intending to submit them back into the drawing. The houses came out cute enough and the paper-pieced trees took me long enough that I decided to keep the trio and make it into a small wall hanging. Here is the squat house complete with spidery window and door and a skeleton lurking in the attic.


The tall house had ghosts on the first floor and jack-o'-lanterns peeking out the second story window. I split the tree block and sandwiched the tall house in between the two paper-pieced pines.


I placed the trio on my design wall and plan to add a lawn in front courtesy of green fabric culled from my stash. Perhaps I will interrupt the grass with a couple of angled walkways and bind the unit pretty much the size it is. The blocks with the blue marbleized background finished about 12" each.


Linking up now with Let's Bee Social #198 from Sew Fresh Quilts...

1 comment:

  1. This is cute, I know a little girl who would love these.

    ReplyDelete