Mermaid Art Doll project #5 - Wings - a mad burst of creativity

A mad burst of creativity yesterday has resulted in my mermaid's wings cut out, stitched up and half decorated in the space of about an hour. Thankfully I had my wits about me enough to actually take some photographs whilst I was doing it.

I had been looking at a wonderful book called 'The Birth of Dragons' and it had such wonderful illustrations that it kicked off my muse.

I started out with a simple hand drawn paper template that I cut out in two layers, one of strong whtite cotton and one of muslin.

I then stitched around the outside to secure and form my tattered couture edge

these are my two wings all cut out, edge stitched and ready to work on

I did a mix of zig zag stitch in dark tan and straight stitch in greens, yellow and cream around the outside and stitched my leaf shapes in green and tan to form the pattern for my reverse applique ( I've not made reverse applique since college so was a bit nervous of going through the whole lot)

I then did a load of free form motion embroidery to give it a padded, layered look and to create the shapes of wings sections

These are my wings not yet RA'd but all stitched up. I'm really pleased with the effect

Mermaid Art Doll#4 and some research on mermaids with wings

The muse has not been forthcomig of late for my doll but I hope over the w/e I can really work on her

So far I've added sequins to her tail and embroidered the ends of the tail in green thread.

My next task is her wings.

Mu inspiration for giving her wings as an image from Das Buch der Nature in which there are all manner of fantastic creature one of whome is a winged mermaid. This was popular in the Middle Ages and was thought to represent the bird sirens of classical myth guiding the spirits to the afterlife.

this is the image I've been talking about

A search for mermaids with wings comes up with a few references to medieval carvings ,a strange tattoo that seems ot be part mermaid, part lionface, a truly gorgeous Raku pottery water angel that I recommend anyone looks at (here) from an artist called Nadine Unsworth and in images you get children's costumes, folk art and the odd altered barbie but not much else.

My idea is to have three layers, One of the same heavy dutty cotton as her body is made of, one of muslin and one of either green organza or light green cotton.

Step two will be to cut them out in the wing shape and machine stitch around the edges to give an organic look to them. I will then be doing some more stitching and reverse appliquing the layers so you can see all three fabrics and hand decorating with seed beads and metallic paint. I did do some sketches of what I wanted to creae but my track record of keeping with design plans is pretty loose so I'm going to 'wing it' no pun intended