Those adorable stuffed characters of a boy elf and a girl elf are smiling, beguiling, even begging to be held or brighten up someone's holiday home, accompanied by their three pet polar bears and three pet penguins. I made up two sets of them for my two households of grandchildren. They are from a panel by Moda designer Stacy Iest Hsu.
These panels always take me longer to cut out than I remember from other Stacy Hsu dolls. Although sewing them is a cinch, I find this array of tools sure helps me with the turning, and finessing, and stuffing. Those long thin arms and legs are a challenge; but after making all her released panels so far, I have gotten the knack of it. The Turn-it-All helps "right-side-out" the long thin appendages and the gripping forceps help grab and stuff the fluffy fiber fill down into them.
I have also learned one panel per household, not one per each of six grandchildren, is sufficient. Even my penchant for the repetition tendencies of a quilter draw the line at six times! My past repertoire includes these previous sixteen panels I made up for my grandkids, who reside in two households: Lil Heroes, Howdy, Hansel & Gretel, Goldilocks& the Three Bears, Bunnies, Coral the Mermaid, Lil Red, Princesses, and Castle.
The panel of elves has many more pieces when you count the hats, clothes and pets.
This project led to scraps from the two panels. The illustration of the boy elf and the girl elf and the mini-scene of the two of them at the North Pole are too cute to just toss. Similarly the green border around the panel can be incorporated elsewhere, perhaps as a sashing or perhaps for placemats or pillows when paired with another fabric or two. Look closely; there are even cute tiny candy canes in many colors along the selvage. That border totals 258 discontinuous inches with varying seam allowances. It has a collection of seasonal phrases: Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Be Merry, Ho Ho Ho, Jingle Bells, Fa La La La La, Tis the Season. How could I possibly toss all those cheerful greetings in the trash? I couldn't. (I do have to store these scraps now. Bah, humbug!) But even
I was able to toss out the printed instructions.
What a delightful set of makes! I love the pockets in the girl's skirt to store all their friends, although I do wonder why they have animals and not toys. And, I think all those phrases would be great to donate to a quilt guild's charity bin for holiday quilts, or to sew to the back of Christmas quilts like a nametag. Kids like searches and finds, maybe this could go in a Christmas Jelly Roll Race depending on width. I'm a lot more liberal about throwing out fabric than you are, but now that I've thought about it for a few, I'd have a hard time giving these up too!
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