Nutcracker Sampler: on the stroke of midnight...
- Nicola
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
This is the second of my 'Christmas in July' posts introducing you to a new cast of Petit FOUR sampler patterns: the Nutcracker blocks (you can read the first post here).
Tchaikovsky's enchanting ballet was inspired by ETA Hoffman's fantastical Christmas tale of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and, a century later, a family outing to see the Nutcracker became a cherished Christmas tradition for children and adults alike.
For the past nine months Andrea from the Willow Cottage Quilt Company and I have been keeping the spirit of Christmas alive as we posted parcels of Tilda-filled goodness to our Nutcracker Block of the Month participants.
We've met the Stahlbaums as they celebrate Christmas Eve and now, as the rest of the family retire to their beds, their daughter Clara stays downstairs to play with her toys for just a little while longer...
Grandfather Clock
Clara's adventures truly begin as the clock strikes midnight and in many ballet productions a Grandfather clock becomes Clara's portal into the magical Land of Sweets.
Surrounded as we are by electronic timepieces, it's easy to forget how inaccurate timekeeping was in centuries past. The first mechanical clocks were made nearly a thousand years ago, but their complicated springs and cogs still 'lost' time. In C16th Italy, the astronomer Galileo, intrigued by the rhythmic swaying of a chandelier in Pisa cathedral, started to experiment with pendulums to keep time. And seventy years later, in Holland, his fellow astronomer Huygens perfected the design and revolutionised clock making.
The design evolved over the next century from simple wall clocks, with their pendulums suspended below the case - like the Cuckoo clocks of Germany's Black Forest region - to the elegant long-cased clocks which enclosed their pendulums. But the latter weren't known as Grandfather clocks until an American songwriter, Henry Clay, visited a Yorkshire hotel in 1875 and was charmed by the story of the silent, long-case clock in the lobby, which mysteriously stopped working when it's owner died. It inspired his famous song 'My Grandfathers Clock' and that's how they've been known ever since.
A PDF Pattern for the Grandfather Clock block is available here and for the Cuckoo Clock block here.
Drosselmeyer's Owl
Now it's time to meet one of the ballet’s most mysterious characters in his favourite disguise….
In Hoffman’s tale, Clara’s Godfather Drosselmeyer, inventor, horologist and – most importantly to the children – toymaker extraordinaire, sets the story in motion with his gift of the Nutcracker. On Christmas Eve night he transforms himself into an owl (or, perhaps, from an owl, Clara is never quite sure) to oversee the battle between the toys and the mice. A truly gothic character, he is by turns both intriguing and unsettling.
Tchaikovsky makes him a more benevolent figure: a magician who directs the action of the ballet as surely as the conductor directs the orchestra. And in our quilt he’s represented by his avian alter ego, resplendent with Dresden fan wings.
A PDF Pattern for the Drosselmeyer's Owl block is available here.
The Mouse King
The dastardly Mouse King is the Nutcracker’s sworn enemy - hard to believe when he’s so cute - and they fight a duel at the end of Act I, when the toys do battle with the marauding mice and Clara saves the Nutcracker with a well-aimed slipper.
At home we may be battling some mice ourselves: when winter bites and foraging for food is harder, mice will be irresistibly drawn to warm pantries stuffed with Christmas goodies. It’s a battle that’s been waged for generations and one that the Prussian author Ernst Hoffman would have been familiar with when he wrote the Nutcracker & the Mouse King – as it was originally titled – back in 1816. In Hoffman’s tale the Mouse King was a rather more alarming figure, resplendent with seven heads. Now I like a challenge, but that would have been tricky to translate into a quilt block, so I included six more Crown companion blocks in my quilt to represent them all.
A PDF Pattern for the Mouse King block is available here.
I'll be releasing a PDF book with all of the Nutcracker PDF block patterns collected together, along with their Land of Sweets setting, on the 6th of July. And if you'd prefer a printed Pattern book, they'll be arriving in the shop - and Amazon - in a couple of weeks.
With the battle won and the Mouse King defeated, in my next Nutcracker post we'll be transported through a fairytale forest to the Land of Sweets and meeting the ballet's most beloved character. Sugar Plum anyone?
with love from the studio,
