Thread Painting the Hawk Moth

I considered a number of ways to present this moth and as the project got bigger and bigger in my head, I laughed and decided to simply thread paint.
I took a few hours this morning though, and quilted the backing. There was really no other logical way of doing this already very busy back ground other than tracing the "tiles". This satisfied the elusive question of showing your work on the back. Now I won't have to fussy quilt around leaves and flowers.

To paint the moth I started with a small piece of a brown/purple batik cut just big enough for the moth. To hoop it I needed to add borders for the hoop to grab. After tracing the outlines of the moth onto the tear away stabilizer, I transferred the outline to the cloth. Then the piece went into the hoop.

 

I started with the with a light beige/brown.

 

 Though the pictures appear to show a lot of black, I chose a dark brown. I can always add bits of black later.

 

Then bars of white to finish the wings. Now I need to spend some time picking the right pink/magenta/purple.
One hour later I decided to blend all three!

 

The hold up now is how to finish the abdomen, whether to leave some of the material unstitched. 

 

January 5 - Well this morning I decided to "paint" the whole thing. So here she? is.

I gave the brown areas a few passes with an even darker brown and the white crown and the strips on the body had a few passes with a sparkle white. I cut away the excess batting and trimmed, folded and glued the batik backing along the edges. That way I don't have to stitch the moth down all around.

 

 

The antennae and the tongue will be added when I place this on the flowers.