My son David was getting married, and I decided to make something special to commemorate the wedding. The wedding was to take place in Disney World Florida followed by a celebration meal and last but not least watching the Magic Kingdom firework display lighting up The Castle. As this is Kerry’s favourite Disney location I thought this might be a good place to start. I normally do a x-stitch project to commemorate such events, but this time a wanted to try something different. My first thought was to do an appliquéd castle.
I’ve done a few different crafts, knitting, dress making, soft furnishing, x-stitch, etc, but I’d say that tie-dying is my passion. As a young girl all my friends were dying their hair while I was dying my t-shirts. I now dye my hair to cover the grey! And I’m still dying the t-shirts and anything else I can get my hands on. So it seemed only natural to dye my own fabrics for the project.
The castle and border fabric was space dyed in a cat litter tray using acrylic paints. The roof top fabric was scrunched into a cup and dyed with procion dyes. I used fabric paint and a toothbrush to get a pink mist around the castle. I appliquéd the castle, but thought it looked somewhat flat. Shortly after joining JHO Philippa Naylor talked us through her quilts, and I thought WOW I’ve gotta have a go at that. So I bought her book quilting in the limelight and used the trapunto technique to pad out the castle. The fireworks are done with free machine embroidery, which I’m also new at. I did find the metallic threads challenging, but fireworks need sparkle and The Stitch Witch showed me how to add extra sparkle with gluing on crystals. I didn’t have a clue what to do with the grounds until I watched yet another workshop from JHO, monoprinting with Lesley Brankin. The path is a scrap of fabric that I dyed years ago, I then stitched slab shapes onto this and darkened between the cracks with a fabric pen. I wasn’t brave enough to do the wording with free machine embroidery so settled on hand painted and stitched to emphasize. While in Florida celebrating the wedding, my daughter is so pleased with herself for finding the perfect Disney pin a lucky horseshoe with Mickey’s ears to add that finishing touch.
While I feel there is room for improvement, as a first using several different techniques, I’m really rather pleased with it. More importantly so it my son’s new wife whom the surprise gift was for.
I would like to mention that I’m rubbish at drawing so the basic castle shape came from www.drawingstep.com which I adapted slightly for applique
I would like to thank JHO and those involved for the input into my first wall hanging. Looking forward to many more workshops and trying out new things.
