The archway framing the scene is constructed of a variety of fabrics, including hand-dyed gradations.  The thickness of the archway is given its dimension by fussy cutting mottled print fabrics, creating  undulating highlights and deep accents. The cape was machine quilted, and includes, in the quilting stitches, the name of Meryl Ann’s mother, who was in hospice and passed away during the construction of this ensemble in 2005.

Under the cape, the front of the original tabard design features seven twinkling lamps that represent the luminescence of inner light. Their prismatic foil flames flicker above blue-violet dupionni silk lamps against a crazy-quilted, red-orange background.  Flames and lamps are embellished with pearls and crystals. Bells and beads hang from the bottom of the tabard.  The attached necklace is machine quilted on heavy interfacing and embellished with beads, bells and prismatic foil.

The back of the tabard features the image of another “jewel” of India:  Lakshmi (“Lock-shmee”), the goddess of abundance, love, grace, light and beauty. Effective color and value choices in both fabrics and quilting threads create the stunning three-dimensional effect of drapery and the impression of a glowing light around the figure.

The goddess’ face and arms were drawn onto butterscotch-colored fabric with Prismacolor pencils, then heatset with an iron.  Two of Lakshmi’s four hands hold the lotus flowers that symbolize divine enlightenment. She holds another hand out to bestow her abundant spiritual blessings, and from another hand cascades her material blessings. This shower of golden coins is created from sew-on charms, prismatic foil circles, crystals and gold-plated beads.

Lakshmi’s trims and jewelry are created with hot fix pearls and crystals.

The pink lotus the goddess stands upon is fussy cut from mottled print fabric for a dimensional look.  At the bottom of the tabard back hangs a copper-colored beaded tassel, an embellishment that also acts as a counter weight to the hanging beads on the front.

The tabard is embellished with buttons from and trimmed with gold lame piping. The cool blue-violet color of the bias binding was selected for its strong temperature contrast with the warm glow around the goddess.

The fabric crown is made of metallic gold stretch denim and is heavily embellished with pearl beads, acrylic sew-on rhinestones, hot fix crystals, buttons, prismatic foil, mirrors and glitter T-shirt paint. The crop top and hip wrap are made of 100% silk yarn by Mango Moon, knit by  owner/founder, Amana Nova.  Women in a village in Nepal use drop spindles to spin Mango Moon’s multicolored yarn out of recycled silk sari’s from India. 

Sheer harem pants decorated with holographic foil sequins, bracelets of beads strung on gold elastic cord, and quilted ankle bracelets embellished with beads, buttons and bells complete the ensemble.

Used in this project:

CAPE:

Mini batik panels of elephants from Island Batik

Hot fix crystals by OESD These crystals can be applied so quickly that Meryl Ann was able to attach about two thousand of them in 8 hours – that’s approximately 250 crystals per hour!

Jinny Beyer’s Ravello border print fabric by RJR in the center front of the cape. This border was handquilted with Sulky’s Sliver and Holoshimmer threads and embellished it with beads by The Beadery

The yoke features a clasp by Blumenthal

The dramatic lining is Lonni Rossi’s Fragments by Andover, embellished with fabrics from the Prism Imagine and Watercolors line by FreeSpirit.

Steam-A-Seam-2, a fusible webbing by the Warm Company, allows the fabric shapes to be temporarily adhered with hand pressure, then repositioned as desired as the design develops, before being permanently adhered with the iron. This scene on the back of the cape was embellished with QRI’s Radiance and Chenille trims.

The deep blue archway framing the scene was constructed of a variety of fabrics, including hand-dyed gradations by Cherrywood, sewn onto Benartex’s “Crazy for You” foundation panels. The thickness of the archway was given its dimension by fussy cutting each piece of fabric from Benartex’s Fossil Fern collection, in order to create undulating highlights and deep accents.

TABARD:

The necklace that is attached to the tabard is machine quilted on Timtex and embellished with beads, bells and prismatic foil.

The pink lotus the goddess stands upon is fussy cut from Fossil Fern fabric.

The tabard is embellished with LaMode buttons from Blumenthal and trimmed with gold lame piping.

The fabric crown is made of metallic gold stretch denim stuffed with Fairfield’s High Loft batting and jumbo gold lame piping, hot glued onto a plastic soft drink bottle! The crown is heavily embellished with pearl beads, acrylic sew-on rhinestones, hot fix crystals, buttons, prismatic foil, mirrors and glitter T-shirt paint. The EZ Glitzer tool  was used to adhere Swarovsky hot fix crystals onto acrylic rhinestones, to create “glitz  on top of glitz”!