A Tribute and a Reveal

I can now show you what I have been working on for my MUSIC challenge.  It took some time to come up with the idea and after some researching on the web I decided a tribute to Frank Mills' melody Music Box Dancer was in order. 

Initially I printed the sheet music and was going to incorporate it in the piece.  After a few attempts to stitch the paper to a backing fabric and having it shred, I gave that up.  How was I going to portray music.  Ah yes, I was going to need considerable bias tape to create the image that the melody was producing in my head.  I printed some musical notes,

made plastic templates, appliqued a musical staff in place and overlaid the notes.

Buttons gave the notes dimension.  Next came boxes.  I had some jersey in my stash with music notes on it, but had to stabilise it.  It was far to "flimsy" to stitch to the heavier weight cotton.  I also wanted the boxes to look three dimensional.  Stitching together diamond and triangle shapes gave me the look I was going for.

One small box and one larger box were appliqued in place.  I hoped their placement would give depth to the piece.

Now I needed a dancer.  I found a ballerina silhouette, created another template and fused her into place.  She seemed a bit flat and really needed a tutu.  I had some blue organza and black tulle that would do the trick.  The organza was layered between two rectangles of tulle and gathered together to form the tutu.  Hopefully the picture shows you the effect.

With all the pieces in place, it just needed some free motion quilting, binding and it was done. 

Here is my tribute to Frank Mills, and my interpretation in fiber of his Music Box Dancer.

Why not hop over to the Tangled Textiles blog to see what the others in the group have created for this challenge.   It's reveal day.