Queen pages for Caryl

Today I started work on my pages for Caryl's Alphabetica album. Caryl's theme is Queens and her preferred colours are rich and deep. I was SO pleased to get to swap letters E and F with her. If I had been made to choose I would have selected them.

E is of course for Queen Elizabeth I, and due to the fact that she wore magnificent, embroidered gowns, I had a wealth of images to choose from out of my various embroidery books. I finally settled on one which I liked best, specially as the colours of her gown were red and gold and as luck would have it I just bought a sumptious matching fabric from Cabbage Patch fabrics last week. This was layered up with wadding (batting) and machine quilted with gold thread. Queen E was printed out onto self-adhesive fabric sheet (from Crafty Computer Paper), stuck on top of the background and machine stitched with gold thread around her perimeter as well as on her gown where I used a decorative machine stitch. I added several jewels i.e. beads. The really glittery ones in her headdress and decolletage are an amazing buy from a Creative Stitches Fair several years ago. I had not quite realized how expensive they were till they hit me with the total when it was too late as in my mind I already owned them. I use them on very selective and special projects and I know Caryl will love them.

Then it came to the F page and after Viva la Frieda yesterday this proved yet another temptation too far for me. I have a collection of Frida Kahlo fabrics (you might guess why!) and I used my very favourite one so far, which I layered up with felt and machine quilted in a variety of coloured threads. I also added beads and sequins and provided Frida with a crown and a rose in her hair. The additional image of her as well as the Mexican wall tiles are from fabrik paper collage sheets by Bmuse. I added a red plastic Day of the Dead skull. The words Viva Frida come from another of my Frida fabrics and I added the word Queen as well as the additional E in the middle of Frida. These pages took me all day to do and were not what I was meant to be doing today but somehow they took over and I had so much fun with specially the Queen Frieda page that I could not bring myself to stop till they were done! After all, it's not every day you can turn yourself into a Queen!