Wednesday 27 February 2008

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!

7 comments:

carylsrealm said...

I love these pages! I absolutely adore them! Thank you SO much!

Debby said...

WOW!!! Lucky Caryl. Frieda these pages are incredible and how fitting that you ended up with E & F. I never even thought about this until I started looking at your Elizabeth page and then it struck me and then when I saw your Frida page I was thrilled that you did indeed have these two letter. Fabulous works of art.
debby

Carol said...

I didn't know you bogged Frieda! I am so glad to have found you! Your artile in stitch insired me to start swapping and trading cards and I am soooo delighted to find you blogging too. I have been blogging for a while and it is al down to your article. So thanks Frieda, you have changed my world, I have met so many people, so many new and good friends. Thanks you most deepy!

Femmy said...

Love both pages, they are great!!!

Anonymous said...

No kidding LUCKY Caryl! You have depicted both with such fabulous color and creativity Frieda! If I was an ice skating judge I'd be frantically waving the 1 card in my right hand and the 0 in my left!
Trudi

Janny said...

Pieces of real Art!

Anonymous said...

These are absolutely spectacular Frieda - I can hardly wait to get my turn with you!!!!!

Also - I hope you don't mind if I add your blog to my blog list?

Best,
Trudi
http://www.twodressesstudio.blogspot.com

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