Potions and Spells

Lucky Me... It's that time of year to celebrate the spooky and wicked.  A slightly early Happy Halloween!!!  I get to custom quilt a second spectacular embroidery piece by Hilary R Field of Orange Ca. The central embroidery  scroll speaks to Potions and Spells.   Some embroidery has been outlined as quilting. Purposely, no fancy quilting inside the scroll...  Hilary's  spell message is the all important part here.  There is a bit of negative space around the spinning 'spell' text though so I knew I'd want to add some downplayed images that support the scroll in center.  Hand drawn with disappearing marker and here we go.  Boiling cauldron on lower left .

A fairly realistic flying bat profile upper left. Simple contour drawings come alive with a surrounding fill.  Click on any photo for enlarged view.

Spider and web... makes me shutter. Creepy! 

Overall center ..  This does have an old world feel. 

The surrounding border is various value browns and neutrals. Quilting that would draw attention to these would have been a disservice to the scroll...   so the goal I had was to  secure and use straight line quilting to  provide a counter balance to the active and fluid middle. Sometimes, I really do think less is more.  

This is a truly a beautiful piece of work by Hilary. Such impressive embroidery skills!!!