Tuesday, November 20, 2012

The Grinch - Building Blocks Tuesday

And then, "THE GRINCH GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!"

Last month's Queen Bee for the Star of Africa Bee wanted blocks with our favorite children's book characters.  Initially she said "fairy tale" characters, but most of the traditional fairy tales originated in Europe making it a little tough for us in the rest of the world.  I still had trouble because a lot of my favorite authors are British.  Luckily, browsing our library (which is enormous), I came up with 3 books that are favorites in our house.

  • The Berenstain Bears Spooky Old Tree, which was a favorite of mine when I was a kid too, and now my girls love it.  My mother even sent us a copy of this book when my first child was born.  But, when it came time to draw out a block for this book, my bears looked terrible.  No really, truly terrible.  They may have improved a tad in the fabric stage, but not enough.  My tree was fantastic though.
  • Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor.  My girls absolutely adore anything related to Fancy Nancy right now.  We must have 2 dozen books with her as the main character.  We also have dress up clothes, oodles of accessories, etc.  This character would have been so much fun to make a block of.  I could have really embellished it to hilt!  However, the block size was supposed to be around 8.5 inches, which would have made it a little more difficult.  Plus, I am really not good at drawing people, and Nancy's face was getting a little awkward looking.
  • Finally, there was How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss.  Thank heavens Dr. Seuss was American!  I loved the Grinch as a kid.  I even recall making a hard dough Christmas tree ornament of his face as a child.  My kids frequently ask for this book at all times throughout the year, but it has been growing in frequency with the holidays approaching which is why I probably thought of it.  Plus, the Grinch is rather easy to draw since he is a furry green figure with an evil smile.  So, my block was born. 
Did you know they even have a Dr. Seuss "holiday" here in the US?  My children celebrate it at school by wearing "Cat in the Hat" hats, and reading a bunch of his books.  Now that's a holiday I could really get into!

I am waiting on the final instructions from the Queen Bee who would like a block of a book spine to accompany this block.  While I wait, I am thinking of embroidering the line above from the book, just to add a little something to it.


Now then, what have you been working on?

Link up your fabulous blocks.  You put a lot of hard work into them - show them off!  And, don't forget, you have all week to add them if you like.

Quilter in the Closet

Rules:

1) Please link up only to the page in your blog showing your wonderful blocks, not just the blog homepage
2) Make sure to put your blog name as the description so people know where they are going or the name of your block!
3) Please consider grabbing my button and posting it in your blog post
4) Visit other linky participants!


Thanks for reading today!

Jen


3 comments:

  1. Your Grinch looks fab, I need to get started on mine too!

    PS I have checked that I'm signed in, pease let me know if I show as No Reply, thanks

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  2. My son adored the Dr Seuss books and would laugh until the bed shook when I read them to him.

    Smashing Grinch.

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  3. Your grich block looks great! I love the Little House on the Prairie books :)

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