Dragon batik

You may recall that last year I made a bag using the elephant batik my mother made many years ago.  I mentioned that at the same course I made my own batick of a dragon.  Here it is with a few additional embellishments  to strengthen the lines .  I wondered what to do with it, make a cushion, put it in the middle of a quilt or like the elephant make a bag?

Batik dragon

I was still wondering after I had added a border made with bits left over from the Mint Quilts, mint-tulip and mini-mint.

I had however, decided to quilt it free motion as I had with the elephant. Once that was done I was again wondering what to make of the panel that resulted.

Quilted dragon

I had nothing in a shade or green to match the background of the dragon.  Well nothing until I purchased a remnant for 70p at a Boyes store.  It was just the size of the dragon plus mint border.

This bit inspired me, there is a saying about dragons that makes me laugh and now I wanted it to go with this dragon.  I would put it in the middle of the green panel and it would go on the back of..well it was still not decided but narrowed down to either a bag or a cushion.  

Here is my design, drawn out on brown paper, yes the same brown paper used for the beaded scissor pouch (and my friend worried that she used brown paper to wrap one of my birthday gifts!).

The bottle of sauce you can just about see in the bottom right did not make it to the final design.

Once I had this worked out I contemplated the difficulty of transferring it onto dark green.

Time for a re-think. The design would be easy to get onto the mint material.  With a frame made of the green (by cutting out a rectangle in the middle) would make a reverse colour way to the dragon..that felt right.  So that is what I did.  

This bit I hand quilted, and once the quilting was completed embellished the letters with  Pentel Arts Fabric Fun Pastel Dye Sticks, to reflect the yellow in the dragon.

At this point I decide that a bag is in order. So it needs gussets, handles and lining.

Well the yellow in the quilted bits reminded me that I had some trimmings left from the binding on Monument Dragon. There was not a lot but there was enough to do the bottom and side gusset, well three bits joined together were.

I also had some dark green lining material, again not a lot but six pieces joined together was just enough.   

Next task handles? Well the question answered part of itself, asked as a plural two handles.  But what to make them of ? 

The piece of green cut to make room for the "saying" cut into four strips, resewn to make two.  Add the last little bit of golden yellow and I am rather pleased with the result of my bits and scraps handles.   The addition of eight buttons, four gold four silver, all from the charity shop and the bag is finished.

Dragon bag


   

                                                                                           

So the Elephant bag entered in the 2015 show came second to Mint Tulip. Entered in the 2016 show how would this bag fare?