Cinderella's Castle

Our wonderful Alphastamps Cinderella sheets were simply crying out for a castle to go with them, in my opinion and as there are plenty of castles here in Scotland they was a lot of choice for the design. Eventually I produced a pattern which is a mishmash of various castles I have been to. The castle itself is build like a fort (as most Scottish castles are to defend themselves from the English invaders!!) but I selected Gothic shaped windows and doors for it (because I love the shape). Not a combination I have ever come across so this is a unique castle, specially for Cinderella. Castle size is 7 x 10"

I made a background of brick fabric, which I ironed onto Fast2Fuse (following manufacturers' instructions). I then machine quilted this, following the lines of the brick.

When this was finished I pinned my pattern onto the back (see picture at left) and straight stitched along all the lines using a thick black thread on the bobbin of my sewing machine. When you turn the piece over the right side, voila, there is your castle (as seen below).

I then cut out the castle along the outside lines and proceeded to cut out the windows. You can do this by either using very sharp, small scissors or alternatively a craft knife and mat. In order to have a proper backing for the doors, iron on a fabric to the back of the doors only (on the back of the Fast2Fuse). I then also cut out the doors by cutting in the middle, bottom and top lines but leaving the side lines intact, so that the doors can be opened or closed!

Select a thick knitting yarn which tones in with the colours of your castle and couch it around the edges of your castle, using a zigzag stitch on your sewing machine. If you have a walking foot for your machine, use it as it really helps. When done, do the same with the windows and door. The door is very fiddly to do, you might prefer to couch by hand for this one!

Now comes the fun bit! You get to choose the images you want to appear in your window. For the two top side windows I used images from Alphastamps The Ball#1 collage sheet. In fact the two are from one image only, cut into two pieces. Make sure there is extra to overlap the sides. Put the paper image behind the window, moving it around till you're happy with the way the figures show in the window. Take it to your sewing machine and stitch it down using a straight stitch on your machine and stitching from the front of the castle into the couched yarn which makes your sewing virtually undetectable. These 2 windows also received a layer of Diamond Glaze. The centre window at the top features an image from Alphastamps Cinderella Pining sheet.
Of course the Fairy Godmother also has to be present as well as Cinders in her downtrodden personality and I dedicated the two windows at the bottom to them. I used an image from Alphastamps Fairy Godmother sheet (again this was one image cut into seperate sides, so that Cinderella herself is on the right and her fairy godmother on the left of the castle gates.


Needless to say, the castle needs a prince as well as a Cinderella and he and his happy bride are pictured in the door (image from Alphastamps Happily Ever After sheet), They can be on view (doors open, happy ending) or they can be locked away (door closed, story still in progress)

Now it's time to provide the castle with a landscape. I choose a fabric which has lovely sunset imagery on it, including the setting sun (so that the happy couple can walk off into it as befitting every fairy tale!) I cut this fabric to 9.5 x 13", layered it up with Fast2Fuse, ironed on a backing fabric and then attached the castle by zigzagging over the edges into the background fabric. As birds also figure large into some versions of the Cinderella tale so I wanted to honour them on this piece too.

I stamped the bird image (Doodled Bird from Alphastamps ) onto an acetate (transparent) sheet, using black Staz-on, cut it to shape and stitched it on as shown using transparent thread in my machine.

Finally I couched on a fancy knitting yarn in colours matching the background around all the edges of the background, using a zigzag stitch and matching sewing thread. To make it really stand out, I went around all the sides 3 times to create a really chunky border.

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!