Project Quilting 16.1: Mythical Creatures

Project Quilting is back for Season 16 with the first new one-week challenge theme: Mythical Creatures. Participants were invited to find inspiration in a mythical creature while starting and finishing a quilt within the week.

Back in October, I block printed lots of floral fodder as part of PrintInktober. This seemed a wonderful theme to incorporate some of these block-printed blooms into my challenge project. On Tuesday evening, I pulled out all the trays containing fused floral elements and started to play with the idea of creating garden fairies.

Almost immediately, I started to identify shapes that could be used for fairy wings and outfits, but these fairies would need faces. Luckily, I found the perfect matryoshka doll print in my stash to fuse and fussy cut.

Wednesday evening, I challenged myself to create a variety of garden fairies, each with their own unique block-printed elements. Once I got started, it was pure joy as I played with layering the various shapes to form nine different garden fairies--each with their own unique personality. 

Thursday evening I was battling a bit of a tension headache, but wanted to audition background fabrcs and chose a lovely palette of fabric swatches sourced from Fabmo Creative Reuse Center located here in the South Bay area. The first palette features a variety of botanical patterns in mostly tan/taupe neutrals. The second grouping includes soft greens and teals. I loved all the subtle yet elegant patterns and textures.

On Friday evening, I revisted my garden fairies. A new fairy was added to the mix along with a bit of fine-tuning before fusing together the fairy friends. A fairy ring might make for a lovely composition to incorporate all my little fabric fairies...

After teaching all day on Saturday, I was pretty exhausted and needed to scale back my design if I wanted to have a chance of finishing before the challenge deadline. Around 8 PM, I made it into the studio and started quilting this neutral botanical print that I fused onto some batting. As the swatch was only 10" x 11", it was fairly quick and easy to add free-motion quilted texture using a neutral King Tut variegated thread.

Once the background was quilted, a focal fairy was selected and fused into place. Quilting her with a metallic gold thread added a touch of magic.

An acrylic plastic board was used to doodle arms, legs, and a magic wand. The leg doodles looked awkward, so I skipped them entirely hoping she would look like she was flying with her legs tuckd under her dress. More metallic gold thread added magic sparks to the tip of her wand.

By 11 PM, the faced edge was complete and I was able to take photos of the finished mini art quilt! 

Fabric Fairy: Chloe Finishes 9" x 9"

She was named Chloe, a greek name meaning "blooming" or "green sprout" which seemed especially perfect for this garden fairy.

 

I hope her fairy magic rubs off to help me to finish more small art quilts featuring her fairy friends!

Many thanks to Kim Lapacek and Trish Frankland for hosting another exciting season of Project Quilting! Be sure to check out all the amazing quilts made this week that were inspired by Mythical Creatures!