Mimsy Borogroves and Co.

I tried to give the idea that it was a child's drawing of the experience. It needed to be much bigger than 8 1/2 x 11 inches, so it is more like 20 x 16 1/2. I don't normally work that big.

The background was a hand-dyed piece from Val Bennett, that was green and yellow, the yellow having 3 mandelas. I quilted it first, which I seldom do. This piece was quilted in a sort of child's picture of yellow daisy-like flowers in the grass. This set the scene even though the forest covers it. Sort of like the bit of the story when Alice is small, so it is a bit like "honey I shrunk the kids".

I used strange yarns to make a scary forest. They were made by sandwiching between layers of water soluble. But the creatures are also mixed in. They are cut from a hand dyed piece that is sort of an art cloth from Marion Barnett. I saw the koala and the wombat shaped creatures(on the right) in the cloth, and so started looking for other shapes that could be the other creatures. So, they were layered in with the yarns as if they were peeking between the branches. I stitched vine patterns from my machine using several colours, to hold it all together. It took me 3 goes to wash out the soluble, and finally I put the piece in the drier to get the fluffy feel back to the yarn. The creatures all have raw edges.

I laid this forest piece down on the background pinned it in place and then set up the faces for the creatures. They were a bit too nice, but when I started trying to work out how to do the faces with semiprecious stone chips, they got rather scary. I could tell when they were just right, because they just made you say ROAR with a big feral grin! After I sewed the face features on, I did the binding, and sleeve, before I caught down the rest of the forest layer with beads. The reason I did this, was that I wanted the forest to sort of come out of the picture by overflowing the border. you can only really see the beads when it is close, as they catch the light, but they are similar colours to the background and some of the creatures, and thus serve to pull all the colours together.

So this all was quite a bit different to how I usually work...the quilting, the binding/sleeve bit, the size, and even using all those yarns. I think it is a bit fuzzy, but I think I managed to get the look and feel that I wanted. I haven't got a clue what I will do with it, but it has been an interesting experiment.

Sandy