Dragonfly Dream Hooked Art Project

Who doesn’t love dragonflies? Those water loving creatures with their iridescent wings have always fascinated me. I had a couple sketches for dragonfly patterns, but I was contacted by a customer asking if I could design one in the same style as my Butterfly Bliss pattern.After some thought, I sketched this design. It brought back memories of going to an aquatic park with my photography club. I love the lotus blooms, cattails and dragonflies I saw there.I used the awesome light box my hubby made for me to transfer the design onto some bleached linen.Thankfully, I had a rug hooking event to attend at the time and found this wool that had iridescent fabric fused to it. The woman I purchased it from said that it could go through the cutter and be hooked.So I jumped right in and hooked the dragonfly body. I also used chunky wool yarn and silk yarn. Oh, it was beautiful already! I didn’t like how the ends of the iridescent fabric showed white, but that was easily fixed with a green marker.Next was to tackle the wings. I have done several projects with other fibers and even one with some jewelry attached. And even though I liked how those projects turned out, I wanted to go even more “over the top” with this piece. I decided that the wings should be 3D. So, I grabbed some purple craft wire, my jewelry making tools and started playing.The wire frame was actually pretty easy. Just a few twists.After twisting the frames, I placed them on the iridescent fabric, traced them and cut them out.Because I’m a jewelry maker, I love all things sparkly. This seemed the perfect opportunity for beads. I used invisible thread (nasty stuff to work with, by the way) to attach the fabric to the wire and then the beads to the fabric. It took some time, but I loved the results. I contemplated whether to only bead the top wings and leave the bottom ones alone.But I couldn’t do it. I was enjoying doing that beading. And I loved all four of them having bling. I kept laying the wings on top of the project to gauge how the end result was going to look. I needed to figure out how I was going to attach them. Had to think about that.I took breaks now and then and worked on other parts of the piece. I decided to try my hand at sculpting. Cattails are perfect for it. Usually sculpting is more manicured, but I left mine organic looking. I also added some yarn for the fluff that is often exploding out of cattails.The leaves for the cattails begged for a multitude of various fibers. I grabbed my box of green stuff and found yarn, silk, ribbon and velvet to use. How yummy!I was making good progress.Dragonfly eyes are incredible things. I studied several photos online. I thought about hooking the eyes, but I had seen gorgeous Swarovski crystals that I wanted to use. Again, how should I attach them? These crystals only had holes on the top. So, I crafted a crude wire frame that went through the holes but also had points on the bottom to hold the crystals in place. I wound yarn around the wire frame and sewed it onto the linen backing.The next photo shows the eyes attached. It worked! At this point, I started contemplating the background. I thought about making water and sky. But somehow, that didn’t resonate with me. As I traveled, I began collecting wool and yarn that I thought might work. I fully intended to use only one of the things I bought, but then the thought crossed my mind, “Why not use it all?” Indeed! Now for the lotus blossoms. Since I was desiring to make this an over the top piece, I wanted to use lots of different techniques. It was time for proddy.In order to get the proddy to look like lotus blossoms, the petals needed to stay upright when the piece would hang on the wall. So, I got out my craft wire and invisible thread again. Every single petal has a wire sewn onto the back of it.I enjoyed working on this project as we traveled around in our RV. After proddying the flowers, I worked background in behind them.At first, I left the seed pods alone.But then I decided that they would look better with some embroidery. Yet another technique for the art project.I then incorporated some ribbon work for leaves around the flower bud.Here is a closeup of the embroidery on a seed pod.Matt caught a photo of me while creating. I had lots of light from our big windows.I decided that I liked the lotus blooms!I added a french knot at the center of the lotus leaves.At this point, we were traveling around Nova Scotia. I was having a blast meeting rug hookers everywhere we went. What a wonderful trip! I also dragged Matt to yarn shops. We went to one that was in a room of a lady’s house. I wanted pretty wool yarn for whipping this piece. I liked two of the colors she had but they were of different weights. I just went ahead and used both of them at the same time. Loved the way it looked.I put a fabric label on the back of each of my hooked creations. So after printing this on printable fabric, I sewed it to the back.The piece was completed except for attaching the wings. At this point it looked a little lacking, but pretty.I poked the wings through the backing…And then through a nifty piece that Matt made on his 3D printer. It was just what I needed. I was able to thread the wires through the holes and twist them securely into place.The wings stayed put, just where I wanted them. Look at that cool three dimensional effect.My Dragonfly Dream art work is a reality! I loved using varied techniques on this project. Who knows what will happen when an idea starts to roam around in the brain? This one was a great learning experiment for me. And I just love the results!