Elizabeth's Kaleidoscope

Elizabeth's Kaleidoscope

This is a project I made a year ago and designed completely on my own. A local fabric shop near where I live was running a contest in which the requirements were that you had to use "17th Century Selfie" by Tula Pink (who by the way is one of my favorite fabric designers).

 "16th Century Selfie" by Tula Pink came in three colorways.

Let me start by saying this - I don't like this fabric. I think it's a bit creepy. It's not my style and definitely not something I would have purchased had this not been a challenge. Despite this, I do think that it is interesting and lends itself to some pretty unique projects.

Going into this project, I knew that I wanted the main focus of my piece to be centered around this fabric; I did not want to use a lot of other fabrics, and I wanted to use this fabric in as many ways as I could. To start, I purchased all three colorways and clear flexible plastic. I fussy cut the faces for the center hexagon first. This was quite an adventure. I'm still a new quilter (I've been at it about 2.5 years - although when I made this had only been 1.5 years) and fussy cutting is not easy. From that point I built out. 

This. Was. Hard.

I found this nice contrasting pink ribbon to use as the inside border.

Once everything was assembled, I put on the backing, which was simple, right? Wrong! Using my Embrilliance software, I designed a file of a hand-mirror, placing Elizabeth's face as the would-be reflection. I also named the quilt "Elizabeth's Kaleidoscope" at this point (I embroidered the name underneath the mirror). The background and binding fabric are also Tula Pink fabric, but unfortunately I do not remember its name.

Hand mirror

Next, I quilted the piece, and I did the binding the standard way (my least favorite part of this whole process).

And finally, it was embellishment time.

                         Some interesting ribbon and rhinestones for her crown.                              

                            Plastic pink hearts or rhinestones for her face and hair

                          And some pink rickrack for around the center diamond

All in all, this very odd and not-me fabric turned into a piece I was happy with. It used a lot of different elements and was (mostly) fun to design and construct. I'm looking forward to the next time I have the opportunity to complete a challenge piece. 

Oh, and by the way, I came in first place!