Furze Castle Kite Festival- the mini house quilt I made...

Furze Castle Kite Festival-

My partner has received the mini house quilt that I made for her, so now I can show it to you. It is so funny- she and I were both working on castles at the same time, but neither one of us knew it! How's that for being in-tune with each other?

Hedgehogs are also known as Furze-pigs, hence the name of the castle. A small moat surrounds the castle and it's guarded by man-eating, venomous manatees. OK, not really- but that sounded really tough, didn't it? There is a kite festival going on all the time and you can catch glimpses of the kites in and amongst the mushroom trees in Flyagaric Forest.

This quilt is 12" wide and 13" tall. I know, I can't quite seem to stay in the guidelines, but I needed that extra inch at the top. :)

The door flips down to expose the interior of the hedgies' living room. There's a fireplace, a comfy chair, a floor lamp and a clock. The door itself is held closed by hidden magnets and a metal piece inside the door. Chains, of course. :) A spiderweb in the upper window.

Close up of Mr. Manatee, one of my favorite features in the entire quilt. His face turned out even better than I had hoped since I botched it up initially. By making that 3D piece, it not only saved his face, it made it! His eyes and nostrils are 2 different sizes of seed beads. And blush always brings life to a critter, I've found.

I had a helper when I was working on the label. Nosey Parker doesn't seem too thrilled with it, does she?

The label. I was kind of stumped as to how to make a fun label for this. So I drew a little map of the area and tacked it down at the top. When you flip it up, you can see the personal info of who it was made for and by whom, where, when, etc.

Did you know that Nottingham was really known as Snottingham, originally? They eventually dropped the "S". And Flyagaric is another name for Amanita mushrooms. Hence the Flyagaric Forest. Hedgies love watermelon, so I gave them their own patch. And what castle doesn't have its own maze?

I added a festive bunting to the castle at the last minute, but I'm not sure I would keep it on there if this was mine. Karen is welcome to remove it if she'd like. It's almost too cluttery for me and you know how I love color! It spells out "go fly a kite". :)

Thanks for looking at my mini quilt.

And this is the mug rug I'm making for my swap partner in the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap 2, Holiday Version. I'll be putting letters on the tags to spell something out, but can't show you that until later. I couldn't think of a good way to quilt the white parts, so I stitched gold snowflakes all over it, by machine.

Have a great weekend, everyone!