Rainbow Snails

I ended last night's post by observing that I thought 'creating' promoted mental well being and 'mindfulness'. Well, I think maybe the 'creation'  to most optimize this whole mental well being effect has to be making patchwork rainbow snails! Impossible not to feel better for making a rainbow snail!

I loved the rainbow snail brooch I made the other day, and, since Maria did too, I thought I'd include one in her quilt. You surely can't get much more whimsical than a rainbow snail after all! And this time round I took lots of photos to show how I made it.

I started out just drawing a very rough spiral on a scrap of wool blanket.

Then gave it a light spray with 505 basting spray just to help hold my scraps in place as I arranged them...

Once they were all layered up nicely, I sewed each one down in white thread. Going round each piece individually and then moving straight on to the next.

So you end up with something like this:

It really doesn't take very long to do this, and I didn't worry at all about having to double back on myself in places. Then, in a blue thread, I 'drew' on the spiral.

Going round it quite a few times to make it stand out. I find this bit is very therapeutic! And I think probably a really good way to practise machine embroidery skills - could be a good first project perhaps.

Then you can trim it up, and all of a sudden your snail shell is looking pretty good.

I enjoyed making it so much I made two! One of which I sewed on to an Ipad case. Here's the body first, looking more slug like...

And then the addition of a rainbow shell (and machine embroidered antennae) makes all the difference! All of a sudden he's cute rather than just slimey. Here he is with some friends - very easy to round up lots of snails for a photo shoot in our garden still at the moment!

And I haven't quite decided how I'm going to use the snail in the quilt so that one is just in its shell state still at the moment.



I think a bigger version would look good on a cushion cover too. Or even a much bigger one on a cute baby quilt perhaps?

Sally.