Back on June 1, StitchCraft, our local quilting shop announced their annual challenge.  If you missed my post about it, you can read it HERE.  It gives all the details on what the criteria was for this contest.  I’d been thinking about what I wanted to create for a while.  The only thing I was sure of was that I wanted it to be something I never tried before.  Why join a “challenge” if you don’t plan to challenge yourself, right?? Wanted to try an art piece but I didn’t really have a direction or know where to begin.   Lately, I’ve been into Mermaids for some reason.  I think I’m drawn to them because they represent peacefulness, beauty and freedom.  Something that’s definitely lacking in our culture today.  Recently I made a “Mermaids Purse” and my first quilt top also has a “Mermaid Panel” in the center.  So…..why not create a Mermaid Art Piece??  Well that’s exactly what I did for my entry!!

In late July, I started to sketch out my idea onto paper.  I wanted the Mermaid to be the focal point of the piece. I wanted her to be alluring and lovely with a sense of peacefulness.  It took a while to get everything placed just right so the composition looked balanced.

The next step was to create the background pattern pieces.  The background sections needed to be fused into position first and here’s what that looked like. First the light blue sky, followed by the sun.  Then I laid the dark blue ocean into position followed by the shallow surf section.  The sand section at the bottom was next, followed by mid-tone wave pieces.  Last was the rock.  Each section was blanket stitched down with 2 colors of  embroidery thread to create some dimension.

Next, I started adding all the other elements into the piece. Yarn for the top of the waves, the Mermaid and the sea grass and fence. 

The Mermaid Tail took the most amount of time to stitch all the details.  It’s stitched with 2 metallic threads at once.  One of which was variegated.  I wanted it to be shimmery and have the look of scales.  The one pictured in the center above, was actually the second tail I stitched out since I was unhappy with the way the first one turned out.  I was very pleased with the way this one turned out.  This piece is entitled, “Mermaid of Love”, hence the heart in her hand.  There was an added challenge to this contest to incorporate the number “10” into our piece.  It just so happened that there were “10” elements included in my piece.  The Mermaid, Sky, Sun, Ocean, Waves, Sand, Rock, Sea Grass, Fence, and of course the “Heart” sending Love out into the world.

Here’s my finished Art Piece entitled, “Mermaid of Love”.

This piece was departure for me again and if you follow me, you know I always love to try something new and different.  It’s great to push your boundaries once in a while to keep yourself learning and moving forward.  In the past, I’ve created some 3D fashion illustrations using fabric and embellishment, but I never tried creating an art piece in fabric before.  Thread painting has always interested me, so I definitely wanted to try to add some of that too.  I really loved the creative process and it was fun selecting all the fabrics and embellishments to incorporate into the piece.  Next time I will try free motion embroidery and quilting.  I didn’t FMQ this piece because that really does take practice and I just wasn’t ready to attempt that on this piece.  Hope you love it as much as I do!!