Life is not a Fairytale Quiltie

Alphastamps have recently added some really delicious collage sheets to their collection with the theme of Cinderella, or Assepoester as she is called in Dutch. A very descriptive name as "as" is ash and "poester" is cleaner, so that translates as ash cleaner which describes exaxtly what poor Cinderella is reduced to doing while her stepsisters go to the ball! I'm sure you know the rest!

Many of these lovely sheets were in our Alphastamps kits and I've also ordered a few more as fabric sheets to work with.

After my jewellery day yesterday, today was dedicated to good old sewing. I made a quiltie, sized 8.1/4 x 8/1/4" square as follows:

I selected the image I wanted to work with first (i.e. the fleeing Cinderella from Alphastamps The Ball #2 sheet) and choose my colourscheme based on that image. The background is a piece of flannel fabric in white and yellow check. I originally cut this 8.5 x8.5" and layered it up with wadding (batting in US). No backing fabric as yet. I machine quilted this with yellow thread following the lines in the check pattern. Once this was done I used my rotary cutter, ruler and mat to cut it to the finished size as mentioned above. I stamped two lines of Mice Border stamp (from Alphastamps) using a green Fabrico (now called Versacraft) inkpad. This was heatset by ironing.

I added the wide white lace at the top by stitching it down, and then cut a piece of the same lace to a narrower width and sewed this onto the right hand side on the diagonal, making sure I had enough fabric to cover the sides and stitch it down too. I then cut out my Cinderella and layered it up with a piece of green felt (from Alphastamps), cut with pinking shears. All these together were positioned onto the background slightly on the diagonal and they were held down by zig zag stitching the edges of the cut out fabric image, but not where the roses and clock are as this was too detailed and I would have messed it up with zigzag. I added cross stitches in yellow thread by hand and also beaded around most of the oval shape as shown, with silver size 11 seed beads.

I selected another of my Alphastamps pendants, a gold coloured oval shape. To it I added a picture of Cinderally's prince (also from Alphastamps The Ball #2 sheet) with Diamond Glaze on top. This was sewn onto the background where the laces cross each other, as shown. I used silver beads to sew it down but to prevent it from moving I also Diamond Glazed it to the background.

I choose an image of Cinderella and her fairy godmother in silhouette (from Alphastamps Cinderally Border sticker sheet). All I had to do was cut it out and stick it down as it is self sticking with an almost transparent background. Because I love the stitched line I also stitched around the image with yellow thread. I added the title using my Dymo writer, which meant this was self-adhesive too but again I added the stitched lines for decoration.

I added the shoe charm where shown by stitching and also using Diamond Glaze to prevent movement.

I added the backing fabric which was a blue striped flannel. It was cut 3/4" larger on all sides than the top. I used Bondaweb (Wonderunder in US) to glue it to the back of the wadding (following the manufacturers' instructions), doubled over the extra 3/4" of the backing fabric and folded it to the front and sewed it down by machine, taking it one side at a time. I added blue size 11 seed beads to this binding and also added a small yellow button to each of the 4 corners.

Finally I added another, this time vintage, white scalloped lace to the top of the quiltie as shown by using a white thread and hand sewing and added green tear drop shaped beads.

This is a slightly sinister take on the fairytale story, which of course finishes when Cinderelly and her prince are supposed to live happily ever after but the fact that the prince is in a frame on the wall means that sadly he is no longer about and this is reinforced by the title: Life is not a Fairytale. What will happen to Cinderella without her prince.? Who knows but I think she will manage fine in the end. Her fairy godmother will be on stand-by, no doubt!! And she might meet another shoe fetishist! Fairytales, specially the Grimm ones, usually have a darker side as well so I make no excuses for adding my own twist!