The Snowflake

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Machine applique, with hand stitched details.

The snow is quilted with metallic thread, the rays with silver thread and french knots for snow.  The boy is holding a snowflake made from sequins and a bead.

Just before Christmas, I was browsing through the Sunday newspaper supplements (You magazine from Mail on Sunday)  and spotted this lovely story The Winter Carosel, by David Melling, illustrated by Christopher Young.  It was written for story-telling sessions that were held at London's Somerset House ice-rink over the festive season.

(this is a photo of the magazine page, I drew around the outline with felt-tip to make the image clearer to trace)

This picture really captured my imagination, and on Christmas Eve (yes Christmas Eve!!!) I decided it would make a lovely applique picture & so went through my stash to find something suitable.  I used a scrap of batik from The Little Fella's quilt (still shamefully half-quilted) and some of my treasured vintage linen and a few other scraps.  Then simply traced the picture onto bondaweb & cut out the bits.

I finished the machine applique quite quickly, and actually enjoyed hand-sewing the details. That was until I  started to add french knots for snow but went completely brain dead!  No matter what I did, I could not remember how to do a french knot!  I searched for tutorials, watched umpteen videos on utube and I even took it to the community centre where I take The Little Fella to playgroup and asked some of the old dears that volunteer there.

Then I left it.

Till we had a bit of snow & it motivated me to get it finished.  And this time I remembered what to do! I am pretty pleased with it.  I love the sparkly snow (I am not sure if you can see that in the photos)

So now what do I do with it??  Cushion? Wall hanging?