Snowy Winter Appliques

During Autumn I had pumpkins and other Autumn themed decorations dotted around the house. They stayed out right through to Christmas decorations going up. Now the Christmas decorations have come down the house is feeling  a little on the bare side and in need of some new  dressing – Winter dressing. And I came up with a plan inspired by another of our children’s books – Snowflakes.

It’s a very sweet book about a little girl who moves from her home in the city to a very different new home in the country. It’s all strange and she feels like she doesn’t fit in. But it begins to snow and she realises that, just as ‘every snowflake is different, every snowflake is perfect’, she may be different but she’s perfect as well. This is one of the values that we've always most tried to encourage the children to have. To stay true to their own individuality (and boy, are they all strong individuals!) and also to accept others' differences and individuality too. So I love this story. And I also love the illustrations. I think they capture the emotions of the characters really well, and particularly they capture the magic and joy of snow. Here are a couple to hopefully show you what I mean.

This next one is possibly my favourite.

It just makes me desperate for it to snow round here so we can go sledging!

And I've used it to make a sketch which I'm going to convert into an applique picture.



And I have plans for 2 more simple applique pictures. A nice, easy snowman which I've started...

And a snowflake, which again I've started but not got too far with yet either...




I'm using bondaweb to hold the fabric in place, then I'll be machine stitching around it.

 
I used a very basic snowflake template (here) to get me started with the snowflake, and then I made it slightly more intricate. I'm going to embroider the words from the book - 'Every snowflake is different, every snowflake is perfect' - underneath the snowflake.

All 3 pictures are going to go in embroidery hoops and hang together in a little group on the wall. I think they'll look lovely, just got to get them done.

Back again tomorrow, Sally.