Thistle do

I've been having a practice adding some petals to the children's faces. Being the national flower of Scotland, the thistle is a very popular choice. They had good success fringing and folding pieces of paper to represent frilly thistle down and I reckoned the same thing would work in fabric, which it does. There are however two things I had reckoned without.

I assumed that the children knew what a thistle actually looked like. Never a good idea to assume anything. All the other flowers we tried had petals going right round. Ergo, these frilly thistle things went right round. Right? Wrong. Had to explain it was frilly thistle hair only teamed with an attractive green Santa Claus beard at the other end.

Secondly, I assumed that six year olds would appreciate my acerbic, sarcastic wit. 'Wha dare meddle wi' me! I shouted at them. 30 pairs of frightened eyes looked back at me. This is the national motto of Scotland as we are all jaggy little thistles up here and you mess with us at your peril. Explained this to the started troops who still looked a bit dubious. Will have to remember to tone down the dramatic asides.

One problem is rather been exercising me. How to cut out and reattach to the main frame the children's faces once stitched. It struck me that some of the original background fabric must remain visible. Easier to disguise if it was green that if it was white so I printed out the little darlings on a green background. Crumbs, did that yomp through the ink! I'm printing onto Miracle Fabric Sheets and 14 little miracles used a whole cartridge of yellow ink. It does solve the green Santa Claus beard problem rather nicely. Those being thistles can be cut out plus beard thus incurring minimum meddling. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.