Elves in a Garden

Ta-da!

This square is one of the biggest changes I've ever made to a pattern. I've replaced the wizard from the Sword in the Stone (1963) with elves! Most of this is original; the elves are based on a Lord of the Rings pattern, but the rest are of my own design.

The elf in purple (and it is purple - my camera has a difficult time picking up purple, and tends to make it all blue) is almost entirely the same as Galadriel in this LotR piece, but I flipped the shadow and light so it makes sense with the light from the lantern. The second elf is Galadriel's pattern cut in half and slightly modified so it would also make sense with the lit lantern the elf carries (the lantern was my own invention though, inspired by that scene in the Two Towers where the elves leave Rivendell).

Unfortunately, it looks like the pattern I based them on is no longer available to purchase; this is the Etsy shop I discovered it in, and you can see (if you scroll down to reviews) people who have purchased this pattern, but the pattern itself is no longer in the store.

The gazebo in the back left was inspired by Fablehaven: there is a place on the preserve near the Fairy Queen's shrine where the naiads live, and all around the pond there are white gazebos. I based my design on the artwork for them, though I didn't make them entirely white in my piece:

Near where I was living at the time I designed this, there was a lovely weeping willow that I just really wanted to stitch. It's now immortalized, I guess?, here in this square with the elves.

It was really hard to decide on colors for all the various pieces in this block, because there was just so much green to work with! I had wanted to go with shades that were silvery or grey-green, because it felt more staid and mature, like the elves I was going for, but it didn't really work with the bright pastels in the rest of this project. The square would just look faded and out of place; so I went with a bit of a compromise -- background elements are bit faded in tone, while the main elements are brighter.

Doesn't look too bad!