Deer in the Forest

It's time to set the quilts aside for a while and get back to my favourite pastime.
It takes quite a while before I commit to a piece. I spend a lot of time looking at photos and fabric and planning how to render what I see in a photo. Well I woke yesterday and it was the day. I spent part of the day selecting a few photos and then projecting them onto my working pages and tracing the outlines. This page is permanent and is kept for future reference and is used as reference for the work in progress. Copies are made of it for piecing.

I haunt the Weather Channel as they have a section where amateurs can post their pictures of the wildlife that lives in their yards and area. What a treasure trove. I can check on colour and sizes and postures.
This is only one a an excellent group of deer photos taken and posted this winter.

A little " photoshopping " and the composition and colouring are vastly improved. So this is what I am attempting today.
The drawing or cartoon comes first.

 

All of the information about sections of coat colour are put on the drawing. These are not etched in stone. Some get extended and others ignored. Front it patterns are made.

I have chosen three fabrics for this deer, all upholstery in the same weave and weight. The photos add a moiré pattern unfortunately, that does not exist in the material. It does hamper the picture.

 

 

My reasoning for three was, the colour of the deer changes from the foreground to the background and this would best be show with actual different colours. The range of threads used to highlight the coat will be the same.

 

I assemble the shape on a lightweight woven poly, a material used for tracing patterns. Its stands up well to repeated handling and sewing and cuts away easily.
The White tail is inserted here. There are several places where white will be added as well as black. Thread painting will do for most areas but this was a large portion and needed to be solid.

To control the fraying which often accompanies upholstery material, I first anchored all the edges with an invisible thread zigzag. Then I started on the tail and the back end.
First up was a thread colour as close to the fabric as I had, then overlaid with a darker brown, following visually the markings from the cartoon and the picture.

 

And then one last past with a very dark Brown.

 

I will not touch the white areas until I'm ready to do the ears and the rest of the white patches.
A rather handsome rump!