Dragon Progress

I started working on the SAQA auction quilt this week. My initial drawing of it is to the left. I made a few composition changes to it and then started right in.

I chose my background from a group of hand dyes I bought quite a while ago from Lunn Fabrics. This was a gorgeous hot fire piece of red, pink orange and yellow. I hated having to cover up so much of it but it was perfect for the project. I added a pale blue, cloud swirled batik for a moon. I had a lot of fun picking through my blacks to find the rock fabrics. While I usually choose batiks for my work, I chose from my commercial prints for almost all of these rock pieces and used only one batik. There is a lot of color in these blacks and it picks up the background. One of the rock fabrics was chosen for the backing print. This is how the project looked at the end of my first day.

Taken in poor lighting this is how I left the project this evening before dinner. Yesterday I spent most of my day working on a big quilt but before going to bed I cut the pieces for the dragon. After sleeping on it I put them all in my scrap basket and took out all my aqua batiks to start over. I am one for keeping things connected, so I chose another Lunn fabric for the largest area of the dragon. It worked great. I ended up cutting one piece four times from four different fabrics before it looked right. Thank heavens for my work wall.

You can see my pile of aqua blue batiks. At one point I had them scattered everywhere before honing them all down to a handful. Miss Super Mario was helping and is guarding the pile in this shot.

After finally choosing the dragon colors I began stitching with the wings. The larger sections are filled with straight stitching to create the look of gossamer wings. I finished both wings. Tomorrow I will start in with the underbelly of the dragon, sectioning it off like a knight's armor. It will also have straight line stitching to give it texture. Then I will be able to iron the arms and claws down. I am aiming to have this finished and ready to mail by next Wednesday so it can get to it's destination by Monday the 1st. Lots more work to do.

Yesterday I ordered Martha Sielman's new book, Art Quilt Portfolio: People and Portraits.
I can't wait to get it as I have heard nothing but wonderful things about it. Amazon has it at a very reasonable price, $8.60 + shipping which came out to $12.59 for me here in the Northeast USA. I'll be posting on it when I get it. If you are thinking about buying it for your library, I would buy soon at this price before someone realizes that it should be selling for more money.


More posts on the dragon's progress will be coming soon.