In the Clearing - Final - "The Park"

This didn't take much to finish.
Yes, I changed the name again.
It reminded me of the park across from my childhood home. In reality it isn't wasn't that expansive but to a child it felt that way. (And of course there were no deer in the middle of the city.)

All that was necessary to do this morning was to add the ground. I released the dark trees to have them sit over the piece. While it's difficult to see in the photo, they now are separated from the rest not only by their colour but their position.
A little "sketching" to fasten and to add "shrubbery" and this piece is finished.
I'm yet undecided on the edge finish but I'm thinking it will handle a proper binding in keeping with the heavy vertical of the trees.

( I still think the deer/wolves or the Velociraptors would have been fun!!!!😀 )

In The Clearing - Day 6

Before I added more of the large trees I wanted to pay homage to the beech. It hangs on to its leaves till spring and often gives a shot of colour in midwinter forests. I wanted it tucked in and behind the large trees.

Rather than thread work, I carefully cut and applied slivers of cloth, and then attached leaves individually. Slow work but I think it was effective.

Then the last of the giants, and the trees were done.

In the Clearing - Day 5

Four hours of trees.
What can I say?

I love trees.

Land Before Time - Day 4 and Time to Rename This = In the Clearing

I wanted to settle the animal component once and for all. Why include them at all?
It adds a "life" component and also provides a focus, a story, as hubby would say.
I agreed the stag and wolf combination was a little aggressive so I went searching some more.
( But Hey! Remember the original was Velociraptors! )

By cutting and pasting I assembled a peaceful vignette, a fawn and doe.

Transferred over to fusible backed material, they are in place. I had concerns for the fragile nature of their legs so I caged them with netting as a protection.

There is a lot more to be done here, but to move forward I needed to locate them.

I also did some work on the crown, filling it out with finer branches. This is thread work. And I added some under-story trees. There will be more to this mid ground work but it's a short day today.

Land Before Time - Day 3 (Finally remembered the name of the movie)

The background is complete.
It took another 6+ hours of tiny stitching.

Tomorrow,......... some wildlife?
This was what I was thinking.......

Maybe, too much.

The Land That Time Forgot - Day 2

Most of the morning was spent adding my Chiffon/Nylon, (or whatever this is). I found some dark gold that worked to dampen the brightness of the yellow and orange and lend some muting to the under story of the trees.

Using a warm iron, I went over the whole piece taming the chiffon, stripping it of it electrostatic devilry that made the pieces stand up and travel every time I introduced another chunk. More Embroidery thread branches and a few cotton ones as well.
Then the whole piece was covered with white netting and pinned. That took another hour.
I pinned every two inches and staggered the rows. Extra pins were used where ever I wanted absolutely no movement, such as where a cloth branch touches the corresponding tree trunk.

Then I started stitching.
It's about 1/5 done, two hours of tiny work. Enough for today, my shoulders have seized.

The Land That Time Forgot

This will be a landscape.
It wasn't the one I had planned, but I need better weather to paint fabric. This had been in my files for while so I thought I'd give it a try using a different mix of materials.
The reason for the title (temporary) is cute. IF you look VERY CLOSELY at the bottom of the picture..........I SWEAR that's a band of Velociraptors running across the land. I have no idea where this photo came from other than through Pinterest, so who knows. Someone's photoshop genius?

I decided I would use a confetti method I read about where NOTHING is stitched down until the very end. I may change that as I don't intend for everything to be applique. So stitching required.

I stopped today at this point because I was becoming too twitchy. When everything is placed with tweezers, I do better earlier in the day. So I'll pick up on this in the morning.

Materials are, so far, polycotton background, thin slices of Northcott Stonehedge fabric for the trees, (some are placed showing the back) organza, nylon and thread.
Again, layers......and layers, starting at the back.

Cardinal - Courting Pair

These two complete the group I wanted to do for now.
Again a slightly different method. This time I coloured the cartoons with a water soluble pencil. Paint in a pencil form. I do like these.

Papa came first. In retrospect he was harder to do than the female in spite of her "interesting " colour. Just what shade of red IS he. It all depends on where and when you see them or in my case which photo I chose to work from. There is a surprising amount or orange red in this guy.

My first impression of the female was that her colour was predominately olive green, but again light paid a great role here.

So here is the courting pair.
I can almost believe Spring is here.

Bird 3 - Bluejay

I only did this one, today. It took almost 4 hours.
There were 5 shades of blue, 3 white plus black and grey, primarily regular thread and a little embroidery thread near the end to add a touch of sheen. I decided it really wasn't necessary for a lot of the early stitching and it is significantly more expensive.
A lot of twitch muscle work, small movements, so I had to take a lot of breaks.

I chose to do this fellow with out a hoop, ( just to shake things up a bit ) with a light interfacing, coloured, on a light stabilizer. Midway I added a heavier stabilizer because it began to distort a little too much.

coloured cartoon

Undercolour with serging thread

some white and black added

 This is now ready to "cut out" and stitch onto a background.
 

More Birds

It's time to think about smaller things, both for my Sister's B&B and for the June sales. So I thought  I'd spend a few days assembling a flock of birds. I'm not thinking about how they will be mounted yet. For now I simply want to stitch them.
Between cleaning ( yes, sadly the mistress of the house has to do her own 😒) and a design consult for a friend, I finished two old friends, the Sand Piper and the hanging Chickadee.

Flying Geese - Final

Everybody is in place, they all have their cheek patches and their legs are secure.
I'll spend the rest of the day binding this cutie.
( and rubbing their bellies LOL )

Flying Geese - Day 3

Except for a 2 hour skype with my sisters, I worked on this from 10 till 5. Long slow, careful day.

The three were joined at their intersections and the excess velour cut away.

Locating them on the quilt was not an issue, but, whereas their feet were originally on the same plain, the gradual distortion of the body placed them at different heights. While within a inch of each other I hadn't added that much additional fabric to compensate, so they were stitched separately, though they're all level to the lines of the quilt.

Flying Geese Quilt - Day 2

I decided yesterday I wanted something luscious for the bellies of the geese, something touchable. I found a lovely white velour at our local shop and went to work

As this applique is being finished off the quilt I spent some time quilting the velour onto batting and a light backing. Why all that? The dark colours of the quilt showed through. The addition of a small piece of old sheeting was the trick to make it opaque.

Adding the geese was a little more tricky. Stitching a piece of thin bias cut turned edge material over a quilted and plush background was slow work.

Even though I pinned I had to constantly adjust. So the geese are little fatter. haha!

I have two done.  Tomorrow should see the three on the quilt.

Flying Geese Quilt

Back in Dec. /16 I assembled a quick and easy FG Quilt. And then it sat on my design wall for all this time. It was really inexpensive and it's only 50x70, but I wanted to give it an interesting and unique finish because I liked it. The balance and harmony of the pattern and kit materials were really nice.

But it hung on the wall for 4 months mocking me as I rejected idea after idea. I finally put all the pieces together last night (about 2:00 AM in my night wanderings).
I went back to one of my earlier ideas and finally worked out the "how".

This is a photo of a piece I created in 2011, a copy of the iconic work of Benjamin Chee Chee, one of Canada's unique indigenous artists. Like a lot of marginalized peoples in North America, he died too soon.
I wanted to feature these geese on the quilt. BIG GEESE!
Today I quilted the top. Then I turned to the geese.

Using a projector I enlarged them to 40 in in height.
I'll probably spend a few days finishing these for applique onto the quilt.

Moonlight - Revised Final

One thing hubby often says to me when I ask him to critique my work is "It should tell a story"
and while the moonlight was wonderful, in my soul, it remained empty, hollow.

I hadn't intended to turn this into a moody piece. It may feel that to some.
To me, now it's complete, it has life.

Revisiting the Moonlight

I always felt that a piece is not finished until I'm ready to let if go. In this case while I loved a lot of things about Moonlight, on some level it left me flat.
Then I rediscovered a picture I had saved in Pinterest.
And that was the missing piece.
A Crow

This is a straight forward item for thread painting.
First the cartoon on interfacing and then colour it. I used water soluble pencils and with a little encouragement, they smudged nicely.

First the black

Then purple for the glisten

I restitched with embroidery thread in black. Its thinner and cut the overwhelming purple solid.

The legs on this guy are incomplete while I decide where and how to place him.
I may need another branch.

I also need some time to live with the purple on the blue.
I can always redo him in just black and grey.