Gingerbread men/women/babies "people" Felt Garland Part One

Just in case anyone thinks I am being politically incorrect.  To me it has always been Gingerbread men!  

I really should not have started this project off not with everything else I have planned but I had to.  It is one of those that I can pick up and put down with quite a lot of hand sewing so it will "grow" as I keep working at it.  Something to have on the go in the background in my little basket.

Gingerbread decorations are something that I have always eyed up as being something that I would want in the form of Christmas decorations for my home but up to now apart from the odd single ornament that is as far as it has got.  So I decided probably quite rashly to have a go myself.

This is the sort of thing I am aiming for but with the addition of cream and red jingle bells inbetween the hearts and slightly different embellishments on the little felt bodies. Like little ribbon dickie bows and may be some rick rack on there somewhere with the hand stitching and probably a little hand beading. Sounds as though I am a body snatcher now!

It started off with when I bought a set of three cutters, Gingerbread man, Gingerbread woman and Gingerbread baby and I used those cutters as a template.  Not sure whether this was a good idea or not as I needed to do a little more trimming than anticipated but for this string as it is the way I have started off then I am going to complete it this way.  However I intend to make a second string but I will cut out a card template and use that rather than the Gingerbread cutter each time.  To be honest it was a spur of the moment decision to start it, late at night and I had not properly thought it through. They are not perfect but will be tweaked as I work them through. 

There is only the outline of what I am aiming to achieve no pattern I am making it up as I go along. This is very much a WIP (work in progress) and I intend to process each little Gingerbread Man dealing with all the embellishment of the bodies at once, then all the blanket stitching etc. so that it is a continuous process.  After all time is of the essence.  There are lots of other things to do.

Late as the hour may be (1:00am), I am in the throes of making a Gingerbread Garland.  So far I have cut out four shapes from the felt I obtained off the market. I need to keep going until all the pieces are cut and then I have some wadding somewhere and some of that will have to go in before I blanket stitch the pieces together.  To intervene the garland I have some red hearts and some red and cream jingle bells which I think will go well with the overall colour scheme of the garland.  So I have made a start on a simple Christmas ornament for my home and I am very chuffed to have started it.  Now need to get cracking on the hand sewing and decoration. 

I shall do a follow up post once I have managed to get a fair bit of this under my belt. 

I suppose my Christmas style if I have one is a cross between Traditional vintage/Victoriana/Folksy.  These styles seen to be more appealing to me and they also seem very forgiving of what style of furniture you put them with.

Give me a few days and I will come back to this with some WIP photos.

Catch you later.

Pattypan

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