Fall 2023

I started my Fall decorating this year by making some felt sunflowers.

I used all my felting skills – I cut the flowers from commercial felt and hot glued them together, wet felted the stems, and needle felted the part of the stem that attaches to the flower (which I attached with hot glue).

Last year I made a peg doll of Wirt from the “Over the Garden Wall” series, and I’ve been looking for a little teapot so I could make his stepbrother Gregory. I finally found one, and I also found some pegdoll gnomes that I thought would work well for his body. I just had to cut off a bit of the hat of one of them. Watching the shows may be a new Fall tradition – we watched it with our youngest grandchild in between making Fall sugar cookies when she came over one day.

For the most part, we decorated the way we have for the past few years, but we added a few things. We found this Mazatl at Target. According to the tag, he’s part of the Dia de Muertos Collection designed with Luis Pinto. A little googling led to the discovery that mazatl “means deer and is the day in the Aztec calendar associated with the God Tialoc. Tialoc is the God of rain and thunderstorms and is associated with fertility, floods, drought, and wrath. Mazatl is a good day for hunting, a bad day to be hunted.” https://symbolikan.com

The website https://azteccalendar.com lists some celebrities who were born on the day Mazatl and they were not born on the same day or even the same month on our calendar and I found no reference to the Day of the Dead so I’m not sure there is an actual connection to the Day of the Dead but I like him with this doll my Birmingham niece made.

We purchased a mushroom at World Market that I almost bought last year but I thought it might be too big. It didn’t seem so big anymore now that we have the mushroom we got last Christmas. The mushrooms have been here all year, but I added the leaf fairies I made many years ago for Fall.

Last year, when I wasn’t buying the mushroom, I did buy another of the World Market little houses. The part at the bottom that holds the batteries looks a lot better now after I painted it black.

I created a little scene on top of the small mission book case and gave them one of those large lawn skeletons everyone on Instagram has. I also hung the skeleton I had printed out a few years ago above the scene.

I participated in the Stitchtober challenge again this year. Last year, I had the idea that tarot cards might work with the prompts, and I was really hoping they would after I found the Expanded Celtic Cross spread that uses 13 cards. When I saw the prompts, I knew they would work, so I searched for simplified designs and sketched out the cards. I thought that would be more difficult than it was, but what actually turned out to be difficult was the stitching. I had been surprised when I first started embroidering again that I wasn’t having the problem with tension I had had in the past but after several pieces I must have gotten complacent because it took me a little while to realize my cards were shrinking and the fabric was puckering. I kept going, though, and decided it looked like the tarot spread was on a wrinkled tablecloth. So I crafted a little crystal ball (out of an ornament and my Alexander Girard washi tape) and a candleholder (out of beads and a birthday cake candle) to sit on the table (actually a plant stand).

Since I was immersed in tarot cards, I found one to use for my treats. I wrote “To New Beginnings” on the back so people wouldn’t get upset that I was giving them the death card.

I thought I was done with Fall crafting but then I got the idea to needle felt some mushrooms for the branches.

I’m so glad we don’t rush Christmas and get to enjoy our Fall decorating for another month!