Blanket for Joy

Joy the Elf surreptitiously visited our house over Christmas this past year when my daughter's family were here from out of state for a holiday visit. My 10-yr-old granddaughter, Autumn, and my 7-yr-old grandson, Isaiah, eagerly looked for her in a new location each day of their visit.

During their stay my daughter and I hung out in my sewing room a bit, reviewing my stash, patterns, tools... in other words – stuff in general. In going through my drawer of panels, I came across this fabric book for The Elf on the Shelf. Autumn and Isaiah are too old for fabric books but the theme was so appropriate I decided to repurpose the panel. I cut the sections apart on the red dotted lines of snowflakes. Then I further sub-cut them into twelve square red-bordered "pages". Four of those "pages" were sized a bit larger because they were originally intended for the cover of the book. I down selected eight of the twelve pages to make a two sided blanket for Joy.

Two of the pages I chose to keep needed to be adjusted for size. I took a 3/16" tuck both vertically and horizontally, hidden at the interface between the picture and the red border so all squares were the same size. I joined the squares into two four patches and cut a pice of flannel the same size. Joining them face to face, I added the flannel to give a little bit of body, stitched along the edges, turned it right side out and pressed. With a few lines of top-stitching along the edges and along the "sashing" between the images, the blanket was complete. Here are the two sides of Joy's blanket. I will mail it to Autumn and Isaiah's house so they can give it to Joy next year when she visits from the North Pole. The downsized squares are the upper two on the second photo.

These are the four squares I chose to omit. The lower left one is curious, but I am ignorant enough about The Elf on the Shelf that I did not know how to interpret it; so I left it out. The others did not inspire me and so I opted to include the eight I liked more. I do not know what I will do with these four leftover squares, if anything. I suppose a pillow or two for Joy is an idea. Maybe a couple of ornaments? Aargh! Why can't I just throw them out?

I also still have a landscape image of dancing elves to repurpose some way. Perhaps it can be a place mat or wall hanging. I just looked at its photo and – ugh – the least I can do is iron it!