Gingerbread House

The last place to visit on the Fairy Tale Quilt is the Gingerbread House. I found the perfect  gingerbread coloured cotton for the walls, with a swirled chocolate roof. Some narrow rickrack turned into the icing, with sugary beads sewn on at the points. I thought the stripey bead looked like a mint, so that went on top. A large wooden bead made a chocolate button door handle, and I used tiny buttons in fudgy colours for the flowers and heart, all sewn on with the dreaded invisible thread. The candy canes gave me a bit of trouble. I tried to manufacture some free standing ones out of twisted thread coated with glue. They dried quite successfully, but attaching them was more of a problem. In the end I just embroidered them using a fly stitch, couched over with red thread.

The Gingerbread House features in the German tale of Hansel and Gretel, and far from being a cosy, welcoming place, it was meant to ensnare the children so the witch could fatten them up for eating, after their parents have abandoned them in the forest. I've added a trail of white beads on the quilt to show the trail of stones the children left to find their way home. 

Out of interest, I've looked in some of my fairy tale books to see how they described the Gingerbread Cottage. It seems the walls can be made of bread or buns as well as gingerbread, and the roof could be cake or marzipan. The windows are made of crystal sugar or barley sugar, and sometimes have nut-pastry frames, which sounds very tasty. You might also find brandy-snaps, raisins, lollipops and sweets to nibble on, and even candyfloss smoke coming out of the chimney. Who wouldn't want to go inside? Although it does seem a bit rude to march up to someone's house and start eating it, without asking first! 

Wikipedia mentions some interesting variations on the tale here, including a French version - La Cabane au Toit de Fromage, The Hut with the Roof of Cheese. I would find that house very tempting too.

When I've not been sewing this week, I've been relaxing with this jigsaw, which features a patchwork quilt designed by Kaffe Fassett. Quite a tricky one to do, in fact, involving peering at tiny pieces of the patterns and trying to match them up. Over the years I have found the work of Kaffe Fassett a huge inspiration, and own several of his books.

 The first one was Glorious Needlepoint, back in the eighties, and I still remember it being a revelation that you could put many shades of the same colour into a piece and get a beautiful result. I also have his Glorious Knitting book, much thumbed, and I made a pile of shawls on circular needles in wild colours following his patterns. The only adult jumper I've ever managed to knit was a blue and green sawtooth creation from this book. Sadly, it wasn't made to last, and I don't seem to have a photo of it in all its lumpy glory. 

This quilt was finished in 2008, and is my favourite of all the ones I've made. It was based on a design from Kaffe's Passionate Patchwork book, and is hand pieced and hand quilted. I can remember sitting on the carpet to quilt it, with one of our pet gerbils perched on my knee.

On a much simpler scale, here's a wonky little pencil pot, made from random stitching over scraps of toning fabric. Unlike the quilts, there was no planning in this at all. At first it was a bit of scrap to try something out on, then the stitching became denser and I liked the look and the feel of it, so I just carried on. By the time it was full, I like it too much to abandon it, so I sewed it onto a thick backing fabric and attached the bottom to a circular base. Little pots are always handy - I'll probably keep some playing cards in this one. I've included it here because it uses the same inspiration - lots of shades of the same colour, blended together. 

Kaffe Fassett's website is here