Psalm 124: 6,7

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.

Genesis 1:16

18" by 8"
Painted cotton with Tempera Paint, sea salt
Commercial Fabric
Metallic, Rayon thread
Fusible gems

I originally created a background with Dyn-na-flow paints, but found it boring and too light for my needs. My 12 year old daughter, Tessa made this background at the same time using her washable tempera paints and sea salt. When I saw how great it was, I asked if I could use it for the challenge. She agreed as long as I gave her credit (grin). After heat setting and cutting up the background, I added a commercial print from Paula Nadlestern's collection and embellished with Glitter thread. Because I truly believe that less is more when it comes to embellishing, I just added a few fusible gems at the end to give it a little twinkle-twinkle. I finished the edges just with a free motion scribble of green and orange thread.