Pim & Pong Thiemmedh

Well, I certainly didn't mean to be away this long!  It's true -- these two ornaments did take some time.  They took a little while to design, and then took awhile to stitch.  Then I had to locate just the right trim.  You get the picture!  Once I finally hit summer and was able to spend my evenings stitching instead of checking homework, I was able to get them done.

I had this picture saved from a couple of years ago when I did a Google search for "felt ornaments."

I just immediately thought they were something special and knew I'd want to make a pattern for them.  Barb, a faithful blog reader, and I exchanged several emails for ideas for new ornaments.  She did some digging and found that a) this was a photo from an old coloring/activity book featuring international dolls and, b) the entire coloring book was online.  How exciting!  She took the time to email me all the pages, including these:

I don't have to tell you that these black & white outline drawings certainly made my work easier!  It took some time to figure out how much detail was feasible to include.  Next up was the color choice.  These are traditional people from Siam (now Thailand) and I spent some time looking at pictures online.  In the end, I stuck pretty close to the colors in the book because they seemed to be pretty true to the photos I looked at.  Green & red were also used a lot, but I didn't want these to look to Christmasy.  I knew I'd want to use some decorative trims and found some perfect candidates at Wal Mart, of all places.

I spent more time than I'd like to admit fussing over the eyes.  Waaaaay back when I did the nativity kings, I was bothered by the eyes on the eastern king.  He looked a little like he just stepped off a spaceship!  I don't know how many pairs of tiny eyes I cut out trying to get something that worked.  I finally figured out that if I cut thin football shapes and then just barely nipped the points off, I wound up with a shape I liked.  I could still improve them for future Asian-influenced ornaments.  The degree of the slant makes a big difference, for example.  But hey -- it's a felt ornament, right?  

So I won't hold you in suspense any longer.  Here they are in all their glory:

"Love" is probably not a strong enough word.  These go straight to the top of my list of favorite ornaments I've made.  The husband and daughter are big fans, too!  You might be wondering about the names.  We have a good friend who is originally from Thailand whose name is Pong Thiemmedh:

It seemed only fitting that I name the boy after him.  Pong's sister's name is Prang (pronounced "prong").  Pong and Prang.  Nope -- too rhymey.  I searched for common Thai female names and landed on Pim.  Pim and Pong -- I like it!  I hope you do, too!!