My Village - Mummers Draft Excluder

This is a project inspired by a winter thing and is a follow up to this post where I detailed how I made our much needed draft excluder based on simple line drawings done by Himself of local historic buildings.  Unfortunately we have more than one door which doesn't fit its door hole so I needed to make another excluder.  This time I based it on the Boxing Day Mummers in our village.  A group of about 9 locals, dress in paper costumes and perform short medieval plays three times at different locations down the high street.  They attract large crowds each year and it's a proudly owned tradition.

Again, I asked Himself to draw me some very basic shapes (he's good at that sort of thing) which I could then applique onto the outer case of the draft excluder.

Then I had the fun job of finding the right mix of textures, patterns and colours.  Because the Mummer's Plays are a mid-winter celebration, I wanted to have red white and green but the colours had to work in a way which would be good all year round and be jolly.  In one of my frequent rummages in my local fabric shop I found some newsprint style fabric and that had to be included since the Mummer's costumes are made from strips of paper.  Below I'm laying out the cut out pieces and trying out the design on the outer casing of the excluder.

It's quite fiddly.  All those little pieces of bunting are made from individual pieces.  You can see the discarded bits of applique backing paper.  I had to get a bit busy with the hoover once I'd completed the project, there were bits of paper all over the place.

How's it looking now?

A bit more fiddling about...

Mostly happy with that layout so now I can remove all the backing paper and iron into place.

Stuck on and ready for the sewing.

I am happy to admit I'm not very good at machine embroidery.  I love it but I wobble everywhere and have a messy technique. (Don't look too closely.)

See what I mean?  But it doesn't matter.  No one's going to get that close to the finished item.

I use a hoop to try and hold it all taught.

Despite the wonky sewing, I like our locally inspired, handmade things around the house. They root us in our home and our village and have a little story behind them.  Himself has promised to do me some simple line drawings of other local landmarks and I'll use them to make some cushions in the future.