Christmas Angel

This project was made as part of a Craftsy course:
Thread Art »

Materials

Cotton fat quarter; Thermore batting, which is thin and made specifically for quilted clothing; Sharpie permanent marker; black polyester thread; blue cotton quilting thread; Derwent coloured pencils; Derwent watercolour pencils; fat quarter cotton backing fabric with Christmassy pattern.

What was your inspiration?

Lola Jenkins's Thread Art class and Lola's enthusiasm! The picture was taken from "Angel and Fairy Designs" by Rebecca Balchin - a photocopiable pattern book from Search Press, published for use by craftspeople, artists, needleworkers and all those interested in creating their original ideas and projects (so it says on the back).

What are you most proud of?

Getting this far without ruining the whole thing. However, I've decided to post a picture of the unifinished project because I'm so afraid of spoiling it with the next steps. As the angel is holding a sort of banner and there are scrolls on either side, the picture's crying out for some words to be written on it. I'm toying with "Peace", "Christmas 2012" and other things as yet and haven't made up my mind. Whatever I decide on, I shall have to write the words with a permanent marker since, although my sewing machine has a couple of alphabets, I don't trust myself to sew the words on neatly enough. Also, I have some fabric medium but it was very difficult to find it here in the UK and it might not be the right stuff. I shall try it out on scrap material before jumping in with both feet (like a daredevil!!!!) When I first coloured the angel, it was with ordinary Derwent coloured pencils (local stockists don't seem to have heard of Permacolor) and it looked rather faded and a bit like a child's drawing. I already had a set of Derwent watercolour pencils, so tried them without much more success until I wetted them. After that the colours came out far more strongly. I just hope they won't bleed when I apply the fabric medium. I only did a little quilting in the background and it would have been better done in gold metallic thread, but my original idea was to do a sort of sky effect with clouds for which I bought the blue thread, but I couldn't get it right.

What advice would you give someone starting this project?

Be a daredevil and jump right in! If it's a disaster (and Lola will tell you that there are NO mistakes) it won't matter as this isn't an expensive hobby (unlike patchwork and quilting!) and you can always have another go. It would be as well to see that your machine has an open-toe foot as I found it very difficult to keep on the lines when quilting with mine, which although it's transparent plastic, isn't an open toe which was a bit frustrating. The angel's face was difficult to sew, being rather small and intricate, and she came out looking a bit grim! Once coloured though, the discrepancies didn't show up nearly as much. Thread Art is a really satisfying craft and I think my Christmas Angel is going to be the first of many projects, even if I ruin her completely with the lettering and finishing. If I finish it successfully, I'll post a picture of it again (but don't hold your breath!)!