My Quilled Loon, A Wonderful Design by Accident #5

Today is my birthday..and one of my favorite quilled designs is my Loon. Happy Birthday to me!

Being everyone's favorite water bird in New Hampshire is what brought me to this Loon design in the beginning. I was tired of doing just flowers. Little did I know than that I would circle back around to flowers, but flowers my way.

I wanted to do birds and ducks, but they never really looked like a bird or a duck.

My original technique of placing a cut out over the Quillwork was a wonderful accident. At the time, my mother-in-law was creating cut and pierced lampshades. She would cut out her designs and then do a lot of punching with a needle to let the light show through the designs. They were quite detailed and really very lovely. We were looking at her work and my work and thinking that we could put my Quilling on her lampshades. Somehow. Maybe. Hopefully.

She had created a lampshade with a cut Loon on it for her design.

So she cut the entire loon out and we placed the Quilling behind the opening. It looked wonderful, but when you turn on the light, all you could see was a blob. Because the light showed through the shade as well as the Quilling, we couldn't really recognize the Loon. It looked like nothing at all.

The Quilled Loon turned into a Quilled blob.  Nothing special at all.

So we turned off the light and saw the beautiful Loon. Well, needless to say, the Quilled Loon under the cut out worked for me, but not for her lampshades. A bit of a disappointment, for both of us.

But it turned into something wonderful for me after all. I used a simple cut out to place over the Quilling and used the Quilled rolls of paper for the details in the Loon, which looked just like feathers (as long as they go in the right direction) and then framed it in a nice wood frame. So off I went with a new idea, and off to the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen I went to be juried. And you have already heard that story in a previous post. I then went on to more Quilled ducks and birds, and then back to flowers, but wildflowers, and now landscapes. All because of a happy accident.

We did another shade with Quilled blue flowers on each flat panel which did look really nice. And to this day it is in my living room.

Sometimes the best ideas are accidents.

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​Check out
my Loons
here.

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​​Coming next time:
My beautiful victorian
wedding invitation
keepsake design

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