Creative Cloth Explorations by Patti Medaris Culea

Author:Patti Medaris Culea
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rockport Publishers
Published: 2008-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

THE POHUTUKAWA FAIRY HOUSE

Jane McGowan

The Artist Writes:

When the assignment arrived I was in full swing for Christmas, so my immediate thought for the project was a summer Christmas in New Zealand. That means sun, beaches, family, and our own special Christmas tree—the pohutukawa. So it was that the fairy and garden were quickly conceived and it only seemed right that she should live in the trunk of an ancient pohutukawa tree.

I had just read an article in the latest Quilting Arts magazine on painting cotton batting, so I painted a piece with three different Dye-Na-Flow colors and cut out various crooked strips. I layered them in between water-soluble stabilizer, making sure to create a round front like a hole in a tree trunk, and I free-motion stitched the layers together. I attached this to some hand-dyed and painted lace. Next, I painted the tree house with Lumiere and added seed and Tyvek beads to give depth and texture. The windows where made from a fused sandwich of cotton and organza which was overdyed to get a darker color. Dyed cotton batting leaves, edged with glitter glue, and more beads were hand-stitched onto the tree. The large pohutukawa flowers were made from foam flowers and fabric petals, which I again over-dyed.

For the fairy, I fused two thicknesses of Vilene together and used Wonder-Under to adhere the cotton to the supporting Vilene body. Her face and body were watercolored and accented with gel pens. I hand-dyed silk chiffon for her clothes, adding embellishments. Her wings were made from six layers of organza sandwiched in water-soluble stabilizer. They are free-motion stitched and then the various layers were cut away to show the colors. The wings are supported by beading wire under the satin stitched edge as per instructions in Patti’s previous books. Her body is sealed with a textile medium to protect the watercolor.

I recently read a fabulous book on embellished quilts and wanted to incorporate this into the garden page. I found some batik fabric and free-motion stitched the red bunches from the center radiating out to build texture and imitate the stamen of the flowers. I hand-stitched each flower with metallic embroidery thread and added French knots in the centers. The layered flowers were beaded and attached only around the center so that they would naturally fray to create that soft, fluffy look of the pohutukawa flower. The leaves were positioned around the flower bunches and left plain for contrast.

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