Lion King Challenge

Cherrywood Fabrics held another challenge!  This time for the Lion King.  You might remember the last challenge, Wicked, if not, here's a link about my entry.



So the entry deadline for the Lion King Challenge was at midnight last night.  I can not wait to see all the amazingness of this challenge!  Honestly, if you want to see the creativeness of our little community, just hold a challenge - these people will knock your socks off!

So here is Panache, my #lionkingchallenge in its finished glory.  I love it... although, I didn't at first.  I'll tell you all about it in a minute.  I've decided there are stages we go through while creating our art - at least I do (hoping I'm not alone here).  In the beginning you sometimes struggle with finding inspiration.  Then, once you have an idea you are crazy excited about starting. So you start and its is great, then something happens to make you not so happy - the patterns not working right, fabric fraying, a fabric is running somthing... whatever it may be.  So you trudge on, tackle the problems - fix, correct, or incorporate - and you're back to liking it again.  That's sort of what happened on this project.

It officially started with the challenge fabric pack:

And from there I thought about it, and then thought about it some more.  I came up with two ideas and started doodling.  This is the one that I chose:

You'll see from the finished picture that it did change slightly.  It always does - I have yet to have a finished project come out exactly like my original drawing.

Here are some pics of the process:

You see that last picture?  I hated that pic... I thought it looked like a lion wearing a flower petal hat! So I immediately started adding the mane.  Yes, it was helping.  You'll also notice I numbered the pieces -- yep, always helpful after the fact!

Once I had all the mane pieces constructed and in place, I started on the inking.  Yes, this part was FUN!

Since I used only the four challenge fabrics I felt it was lacking a little something.  I decided to add hand embroidery on some of the pieces:

A funny thing happened when I transferred all the pieces from the working copy to the fabric background.  You might notice the mane pieces are different on the bottom right side.  I lost track of a few, added a few, and well, they got moved around.  Here's the best part -- the universe added a little monkey face to the bottom right corner!  I was so upset that the pieces went together in a different order until I saw that.  Like it was totally meant to be, because when that piece is right side up (like it was intended) it doesn't look anything like a monkey face.

So then started the invisible applique... ugh.  Although totally necessary, it takes hours!  And you all know me and my laziness!

And then on to the quilting...

Again, project ups and downs... I hated the quilting on his face.  Yes, hated.  Maybe because it was only the first color and it wasn't anywhere near done.  Sometimes I wish I could not look until I'm finished.  

Yay! Background fill - that always makes me happy!

So.... some of you know I had a few issues.  It seems I'm always having issues on my own projects (not sure if that's a good or bad thing).  Well, I didn't prewash the black fabric.  Why?  I didn't have a single issue with it on the #wickedchallenge.  Well.... deep breath... it came through on several of the yellows as well as stained some of the embroidery threads.  No worries, I added some black thread to the yellow embroidery threads - fixed that!  Then I added some white shiva paint to the offending areas - it looked so good I added it to a few more!  Do I have pictures, no.  Apparently, when I'm stressing and trying to fix something my let's document this falls to the wayside.  

So then I added some crystals - with all that ink why not have some bling too.  Then it was on to the binding and label, and it was done!

Now we just have to patiently (hahaha) wait for the finalists to be juried - 120 lucky entries will be chosen.  Oh dear, waiting until July 8th just may kill me!  Until then, here's a couple detail pics: