What started as a friendship in creativity and motherhood turned into a challenge to expand our horizons and spend some juicy time together. My friend Robin King (@r0bingail on instagram and Robin Gail Art on Facebook) is an amazing artist and our times together are full of painting, needlework, children and dressing up. When the Umbrella Prints Trimmings Challenge (Umbrella Prints: 2015 Umbrella Prints Trimmings Challenge #umbrellaprintstrimmingschallenge) came around again this year, I knew that I wanted to do it together.
To start our project, we had an image in our minds of a child holding something precious and stumbled across a picture of her daughter at a younger age holding one of their ducklings. This picture became the basis for our piece and Robin drew her image on inexpensive painter’s drop cloth. Taking inspiration from the work of Kristin LaFlamme (Musings | Kristin La Flamme | Textile Art), I tried my hand at free motion quilting for the first time and stitch sketched over the image with my sewing machine. Robin and I added some eyelet for a dress and then cut up the beautiful Umbrella Prints scraps into feather shapes that we then glue basted down in the shape of a duckling. There was little more then lint left after using all of the scraps! From there I free motion quilted the feathers and fabric down with invisible polyester thread and backed it all with waterproof oilcloth to make a picnic blanket that we got to test out with our kiddos at Robin’s house.
The best part of this project was spending time with such a special, creative lady and trying out so many new things. I have no doubt we will spend more time together pushing and nurturing each other in our paths as mothers, friends and artists.
Hillary
