4, 5, 6 pick up... a suitcase?

I had originally imagined I would find lots of parts of the story to fill every single stage, but this was very rapidly obvious I wouldn't be able to do. I also realised I would lose patience if I did larger scenes for every stage. I decided interspersed among larger scenes I would have littler ones that were simpler or just easier in some way.

The first 7 scenes were all about the start of the journey. 1-3 about finding out about the pregnancy, but then 4-6 about preparing for or anticipating the journey to Bethlehem (Luke 1-5)


Thus 4 is the Census that kickstarts the journey.
Then you have 5 and 6 and I thought about what you take on a journey, specially from a child's perspective - which is a suitcase and keys.
Obviously neither would necessarily be a real thing for Mary and Joseph at the time but they would be comprehensible to a child.
Keys also have added symbolism for Christians with the image of the keys to the Kingdom of God (Matthew 16:18-19) being offered to Peter and a symbol of the Pope in the Catholic church.

Alongside deciding to have some smaller scenes to sew I decided since they were different in shape and scale I would have a different style of leaf. Also although I had a fair amount of the leafy green material I used for the larger scenes I didn't want to run out, and I did have a variety of other leafy decorated material scraps. Some of these leaf or faintly plant-y or green scraps were too small for the larger scenes and satisfying to use up as well.