Rita’s Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: Blue and Beaded

[Note:  Alice is posting for Rita, who continues to have major problems with Blogger!]

I’ve never seen a true blue rose – but I would like to:

One of the goals of rose hybridizers is to achieve a blue rose--a feat yet to be accomplished.  But if it ever happens, that would for sure represent the ‘super’ and ‘cali –beauty’ and the ‘fraglistic – delicate’ of our July challenge.  

This rose design was created by Anita Bradshaw and is from her Roses, Roses, Roses pattern collection.  I wanted to determine how she achieved such realism using only three shades of the same color. The concept is simple but the color and depth I was searching for in many of Ms. Bradshaw’s illustrations eluded my needle. However, a pattern for a 33” x 25” quilted wall hanging, similar to what you see, did suit my needs and was easily reduced to 11” x 14”.

One of the things I have always loved about our challenges is being able to explore different techniques and materials.  I had never made anything in silk.  This “blue rose” is in three shades of blue silk.  In doing this technique, the darkest value fabric is not cut.  The medium value fabric has holes cut in it to allow the darkest value to be seen (reverse applique).  The lightest value fabric is appliqued on top of the other two, the layers are fused and then finished with a tiny zig-zag stitch on the edges. 

And for some sparkle: After the silk design was finished, I added three values of blue seed beads each bead being sewn on individually, one at a time.

Next, from the book, “Beaded Bugs” by Nicola Tedman and Jean Power, I created the Eastern Blue Tailed Butterfly (Cupido comyntas) which decided his landing place is good camouflage.  The beading is done on fine wire and is made using the same beads added to the rose with the addition of white beads.

So you see, there are lots of ways to define - SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS!