Giving Your Nutcracker Personality!

I am totally blown away with the response that I have had to my Nutcracker cushion pattern. Thank you everyone for your support. If you’ve not got a copy yet, then you can buy and download a copy from the website.

What I’d like to cover off in this post is ways in which you can make small changes to your pattern to make your Nutcracker your own. This is what I love so much about patchwork and quilting: it’s the little changes that allow you to make something truly unique. So many of these changes can be applied to both the Nutcracker Cushion and the Nutcracker Wall Hanging.

I’d like to pretend that this is born out of generosity on my behalf, but in all honesty much of this work forms part of my design process. I like to try out different layout options, different colours and different fabrics to see the effect it has on the design.

Here I’ll show you a few different options for eye placement, hair colours and colour of uniform. Let me know which are your favourites!

In the Nutcracker Cushion pattern I suggest that you use 1/2″ buttons for the eyes. You can of course use buttons of any style or size, but I found that 1/2″ buttons did the trick for me.

What I found interesting though was that a small shift in the placement of the buttons made a big difference in the character of the Nutcracker. Just have a look at the picture to see what I mean.

In some of them he looks cute and friendly, some he looks a bit cross and in one of them he looks a little like a bit of a bumbling fool….I’ll let you guess which I think is which!

Both the pattern for the Cushion and the pattern for the Wall Hanging suggest giving the Nutcracker white hair and a white moustache. I really liked the look of the white, but I must say I had a hard time deciding that white was going to be the final colour.

This image shows you some of the options that I looked at. I was very taken with both the grey and the ‘ginger’.

What will choose for your Nutcracker?

I think that the jacket colour is where you can really ‘go to town’ . By using a print rather than a solid you can make something really rather special. There are so many fabulous Christmas prints available, especially those that have a gold overlay. He could end up looking really rather fancy!

The Cushion pattern suggest using a green and the Wall Hanging suggests red for the jacket. I think there are lots of options you could go for for your Nutcracker. I still think I would love to make one with a lovely rich, jewel like purple.

Both the Nutcracker Cushion and Nutcracker Wall Hanging patterns are available for purchase and immediate download from the website. Don’t forget that the Nutcracker Cushion comes with instructions to make a Mouse King Cushion too!