cutiepie

Just proving I have a lighter side-meet Cutiepie or the Velvet Bird as he is really.

I was given a copy of Maggie Grey/Valerie Campbell Hardings book “Layers of Stitch” as a present, and I have been playing with some ideas from it. Such a luscious source of loveliness and food for many thoughtful pieces still to come.

I fancied making an embellished velvet fabric-it is after all the season for opulent materials. Using black velvet as a base, I applied some bondaweb I had painted in stripes with metallic paints, first cutting the bondaweb into wavy shapes. NOTE TO SELF-Bondaweb doesn’t bondawell to velvet. I have some striped chiffon too and layered that over the velvet and stitched it each side of the stripes. I was going to cut the chiffon back to reveal the painted webbing and in fact did so for one stripe, but the flakiness of the webbing wasn’t all that appealing, so I just cut it back to reveal the velvet.

I hadn’t intended to use the fabric for anything in particular and then I found a pattern at www.spoolsewing.com and I could feel a little tropical bird coming on. I made up the basic pattern and decide to embellish the bird with tail feathers as there was velvet left over. There is a little hand sewing on the wings and beads on his breast too.

I think birds are going to be a bit of an ongoing theme this year. I might use them in other embellishment experiments too. A sort of birdie “What if?”