Bella Bordeaux: Last In The Series

This is number five in a series using my same favorite pattern and a variety of batiks in the background. I love this pattern because of the face and swirly hair and all the fun embellishments I am able to add to the quilt to make me happy! I also love Timeless Treasures Fabric Tonga Treats Batiks. They sell them as charm packs, jelly rolls or yardage and I picked up this one with the forest greens and burgundies. When I work on my color wheel class samples I discovered I had NO burgundy in my stash. I guess I saw it as a "country/primitive" color and since I like bright hues I never purchased any. Same is true to some extent with the forest green but when I found this charm pack it was calling my name because it is a variation of red and green and I love that!! I chose burgundy as my raw edged fused applique color because I have done this technique with forest green before and thought burgundy was my "challenge" color. As I worked on the quilt it reminded me of winter in the garden and holly berries etc. This is not a Christmas quilt but a winter garden quilt. I named it Bella Bordeaux which is Good Burgundy in Italian. I love the Italian language and the other quilts had Bella in their names and the color or the quilt added such as Bella Gialla and Bella Rosa (purple/pink.) The other two quilts were monochromatic values or yellow and the other one was in all blues without Italian names.

Since I live where there are no fabric or craft stores within an hour, and I wanted a sprig of holly and berries, what do I do??-I make my own!! I drew out the holly leaves on Wonder Under fusible web and double fused some forest green batik together, cut them out and with some Sulky Blendables Thread I stitched around the leaves and added the veiny details. Then to make the berries I used red, black and a bit of magenta Sculpy Clay and made my own which bake in the oven to harden. I used a toothpick to make holes to hand stitch the berries into place. I fabric glued the three holly leaves at the stem area only to the quilt so it is 3D and then hand stitched the berries around the holly. I took a little red shimmer nail polish to the berries to "frost" them up!! And wa-la who needs Hobby Lobby!!

I embellished some cute red, pink and green snowflakes to the background area and some white hologram iridescent nail polish to the eyelid and one white rhinestone for her nose piercing and Miss Bella Bordeaux is ready! I think I will hang her at Pizazz Salon where I work because the color schemes match!!