Sunflower Fairy Gothic Arch

The new theme is up on the Gothic Arches Challenge site and my very good internet friend Debby is the hostess this week. The theme is Garden Fairies, rather appropriate for the first day that we have been able to sit outside this year. The daffodils in our garden are finally flowering too and I love their shining yellow faces but my all time favourite yellow flower is the sunflower, a taste I share with a much more famous countryman of mine, Vincent van Gogh. By great good fortune I found one of my fabric/paper collages in which I had used vintage French text, lots of yellow and napkins with images of the French countryside and of course the totally stunning fields full of sunflowers which you can admire there later on in the year.

Fortune kept on shining on me as I immediately found an image to fit the arch, from the Alphastamps Quite Contrary#2 fabric sheet. I cut the lady out and added her sunflower wings which came from a sunflower fabric (I have what can only be called a collection of them!) and which were Bondawebbed (or Wonderundered in US) underneath the image. Another fabric provided the little sunflowers which adorn her dress, the bouquet in her hands and the sun image at the top of the arch. To all of these I stitched gold size 11 seed beads. The arch really needed nothing else but being sewn onto a watercolour paper background with a variegated yellow cotton thread and satin stitch.

To check out my collection of sunflower fabrics I'm also showing you a quilt which is a class sample, not one of my exhibition quilts. Nevertheless, it's one of my favourites as it just lifts my heart whenever I see it. All that yellow is so joyfull. It's called Vincents Flowers (what else??).