Fibernation post #5! And probably the last of my fibernation posts for a little while. I have found myself partaking in other media this winter as well and I don’t want to neglect them!

I’m hoping, however, that this mini series ends with a bang, as this piece took me quite a while to complete. The imagery is, obviously, directly inspired by Harry Potter’s Buckbeak and is a mixed media piece, created with commercial fabric, acrylic paint and embroidery floss.

A little history:

When I was a senior at SUNY Cortland, I created, hung, advertised and hosted a senior exhibition. The show was called “Idle Curiosities” and this was one of the pieces displayed:

Receiving overwhelmingly positive response to this piece, I thought to myself, why not make another? A follow up if you will. And so I went from dragon to hippogriff.

Fantastical Series:

As two pieces from the same puzzle, both creatures are approximately the same size and made from the same materials. While I bought the fabric at Walmart, the rest is purely handmade (although I did have a professor accuse me of hodgepodging my dragon).

The tricky part of making both of these was painting on the fabric, as thin cotton has a tendency to want to move around. Also, as the paint dries, it soaks into the material. Meaning, 3+ layers of paint are often needed to get an opaque aesthetic.

While the dragon is adorned with both hand and machine embroidery, the hippogriff was all done completely by hand, again, making it one of those pieces that took a little while to finish.

And so ends this mini-series. While I focused on embroidery this time, there is so much more to the world of fiber art. Hopefully I have opened up a few minds and eyes to this world and perhaps event inspired some of you to try it for yourselves!