Friday, July 15, 2016

Alice's "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" Quilt: Take Your Pick, Mary Poppins!




Of course the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” makes me immediately think of Mary Poppins and the wonderful film by that name, starring the multi-talented Julie Andrews.  But my history with Mary Poppins goes back further than 1964, when the movie came out.  As a child, I was as voracious a reader as I am now.  I adored all of the Mary Poppins books by P. L. Travers and read them all, some of them several times.

Pondering our theme word and what sort of quilt to design, the image that stubbornly kept popping into my head was that of Mary Poppins floating down from the sky, holding onto an umbrella.  That image would not go away, and rather than fighting it, I decided to feature umbrellas.  What about a collection of colorful umbrellas?  Sort of an umbrellas collage?

I had a piece of hand-painted fabric created before this group started.  I had sprinkled the pale blue-gray with rock salt, just to see what happened as it dried in the sun.  The salt left marks that reminded me of raindrops, so luckily, I found this fabric in my stash, and that became the background.

I wanted one umbrella to be portrayed in a bird’s eye view, so it was the one I cut out first from fabrics to which I had applied Wonder Under.  The other four were then cut out, and eventually I arranged them all on the raindrop background.  Buttons from the collection I bought once at a junk store are used for the knobs on the top of the umbrellas.

I quilted this, in part, by echo quilting around each shape.  I appliqued the various sections of the umbrellas down with a variety of stitches, which did double-duty for more quilting and for securing the umbrellas.   I fused the binding down around this 12”x12” quilt.  I couldn’t come up with a name for a long time, but finally settled on “Take Your Pick, Mary Poppins!”

11 comments:

  1. Love the umbrellas!

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  2. Very creative Alice. This is one of my favorites of all of your MM quilts!

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  3. Love your umbrella collage Alice!! The background fabric is perfect and the buttons are a cute embellishment. I like the different shapes and dimensions of them as well as colors. Mary would love it and have a hard time choosing as all are so much nicer than her black umbrella. Yes you, I and Dee were thinking similarly. I think you and I have done so before - we both used bees for cell if I remember correctly!! So fun!!

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    1. Yes! We both used bees and honeycombs for cell!

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  4. Alice, you have the talent to take a simple design and make it art. I'm envious as I feel I have to add more and more before I'm satisfied. I saw an Andy Warhol exhibit and his work struck me in this way. The mark of a true artist. I enlarged the piece and my eyes danced all around with the umbrellas. Good job!

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  5. How perfect to have created that fabric that looks like raindrops! Your title and creation of all those umbrella's make me smile. They look like they are dancing in joy!

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  6. Love the umbrella art! I looked at other examples of umbrella art when contemplating this challenge. The painted background is perfect. Love everything about this quilt.

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  7. Love the background as well as the colourful umbrellas. Well done.

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  8. Lovely quilt. What a perfect name. I also love the movie and her image floating down.

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  9. Alice, What a delightful quilt ! I think this is one of my favorites of your quilts ! [And thanks again SO MUCH for posting my pictures for me ! ! ]

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  10. Alice, What a delightful quilt ! I think this is one of my favorites of your quilts ! [And thanks again SO MUCH for posting my pictures for me ! ! ]

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