Friday, January 10, 2025

PQ 16 - 1 Mythical Creatures - A Korean Folktale

Hi and welcome. This piece is in response to Project Quilting's first challenge of 2025. When PQ's first challenge was announced, I had just checked out TextileArtist.org's Stitch Club's latest class about Korean folktale art. What serendipity! From the workshop I made a piece that I call "The Rabbit's Adventure". Let me tell you about it😊

The Rabbit's Liver - A Korean Folktale

Using a series of images of Korean folktales as examples, I drew different elements of the images to make this art quilt.

The Rabbit's Adventure

The story begins when a Dragon King in his underwater kingdom is sick and is told that he needs the liver from a rabbit to get better. The Dragon King ask's his subjects to go to the land kingdom to find a rabbit. Turtle volunteers to swim far away to find a rabbit. Finally, approaching land, Turtle sees a creature and asks if it's a rabbit. Sure enough, it was Rabbit. So Turtle offers to take Rabbit on an adventure under the sea to visit the Dragon King's kingdom. Rabbit says that he can't swim but Turtle tells him that he'll be able to take him without Rabbit needing to swim because the kingdom is magical.

Rabbit on Turtle's back, ready for his adventure

So Rabbit says yes and he travels on Turtle's back where, sure enough, Rabbit can breathe under water! Once in the magical kingdom, Rabbit is introduced to the Dragon King. It doesn't take Rabbit long to figure out that the Dragon King needs his liver! Quick on his feet, Rabbit replies that of course he would like to help the Dragon King by giving him his liver. But since his liver is very precious, Rabbit has left it in the forest for safe keeping. He is happy to go back to the forest and give it to the Dragon King. The Dragon King is very happy to agree and Turtle takes Rabbit back to fetch the liver from its hiding place.

Back to the forest in the land kingdom

Turtle takes Rabbit back to the land kingdom where Rabbit says good bye. Turtle is surprised that Rabbit has lied but I guess we're all happy that Rabbit survived. 😁

Here is the one process image I took.

After FMQ the piece

Woo Jin Joo: Mythical folklore embroidery

Woo Jin Joo, a textile artist, supplied us with a number of beautiful Korean folk paintings from the Joseon Dynasty period (1392-1910). I fell in love with the tree below. It's so beautifully painted with a trunk and then needles shaped around it. I figured out how to flip the image so that the tree would face the direction I wanted.

Korean folktale painting

I drew the background mountains and water in the style of the paintings. In our images, we had a few turtles and rabbits, so I chose my favourites. Turtle is from a magical kingdom and looks quite different from his cousins on the land kingdom.

Once I had drawn the piece with the various elements, I made templates of the rabbit and turtle to cut out the fabric and the fusible web. Having drawn them once I didn't think that I could do it again - tracing the template from my drawing was the safest solution.

Drawing of the piece with the various elements

I clipped the drawing over one of my pieces on the wall near my machine so that I could refer to it as needed.

Clipped and in place so that I can refer to it

I used the facing method to finish the piece (see Related links below).

I found the tale of the Rabbit's Liver on the Internet if you want to read about it (see Related links).

What I learned

It was really interesting to see the Korean folk paintings and translate them into stitching.
I was blown away by the tree and will probably use that technique again.
I'm definitely going to look more carefully at paintings to see what I can learn from them. I have done that with respect to composition but not as inspiration for stitching or FMQ.
It was weird working with all of those muted colours and I love the calm feeling that they give me. I'm going to have to explore that further 😊