22" by 8"
Commercial Cotton
Machine Quilted
Dimensional Wings
10 hours to complete
I'm not a big animal person. As a child I didn't read animal stories like everyone else. I've had the same cat for 20 years. I don't melt when I see puppies. In that light, this month's theme was a real challenge. After reading it early Friday morning, I thought on it all day at school. When I got home, I took out my inspirational books and saw a picture of these neat Art Deco love birds. Using the picture as a base, I added lines, edited lines and came up with a really complicated design that would make a cool quilt. That said, this is Fast Friday Challenge and I didn't have that kind of time to invest.
So this is the edited version. I quilted the blue base. Then I started on the bird working with a pellon foundation. At this point it started to take on a life of its own. I wanted to challenge myself to only work with commercial prints. To complete the dimension element of the challenge, I double fused the wings to a blue base fabric. Then each wing is cut out individually and radomly. They are tacked down to the bird just on one end and can be bent up for a ripple effect. The bird was then rough edged appliqued to the background - making the body of the bird puff up. I did not stuff the bird but it does look all puffy since I added a ton of thread work around the edge.
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7 comments:
Your choice of fabric for the wings is great. Lots of visual feathery texture. I like the dimension of the added feathers. You created an interesting effect by quilting the background first, it almost looks like a pillow.
Wow Nina-Marie...I really love your creative use of shapes! This is a lovely Art-Nouveau Quilt. I'm so glad you included the close-up so we could see the feather technique.
Nice work!
Cherie
I really like the way you've handled the wings on this bird. Although it's art nouveau there's something about the body that does not fit with the wonderful wings. I think it might be because the wings are so patterned and the body so blue. Perhaps adding more to this area like you did to the wings only with different blues from dark to light to make it less pronounced?
I have to agree with Jan. I too feel if the body was a bit lighter patterned fabric than the wings it might fit together better. Great job of quilting the feathers.
Thanks so much for the suggestions - don't ask me why but I'm not in love with this piece. Maybe it was the subject matter - maybe its that the body is too different from the wings - I don't know! BUT that said - I'm glad I did try out the double fuse method - I'm sure I'll use that more successfully on something else.
Hi Nina-Marie - "Escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers". An excellent depiction of the verse. I think you pulled this together so well and in such a short time. Bravo!
Hi Nina Marie...love the wings, they are just gorgeous. Did you consider integrating the body and wings by adding some of the blue feathers on the body?
Cynthia
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