Polar Bear Final

Once I got the wool colours sorted, this finished easily. Some rabbit hair, anchored with shetland wool helped to brighten the white on the outer coat.

Polar Bear - Day 3

Garden work in the morning and Polar Bear in the afternoon.
Not a bad way to spend my time.

Polar Bear - Day 2

It's taken me 2 whole months to get back to this one.
In between were quilt shows, quilts for customers, knitting Christmas stockings for all the newborns in the family, a trip to a wool fair, and family holidays and visits.
With another long list of things and commitments leading up to Christmas, I have a window here that I intend to use to finish this guy.

After taking a customer quilt off the frame this morning, and doing a few hours work putting the garden to bed, I spent the remainder of the afternoon adding the foundation quilting to this piece.

Tomorrow I can get back to needling this bear.

Salmon Fishing - Final

With this sort of piece you can keep going forever.

After adding some highlights to the back of the bear, hand stitching to define the limb contours and adding angleina into the sewn cheesecloth I declare this Bear ..... done.
( My hands are sooo soft)

Water on the Salmon

My husband looked at this the other day and commented that the fish didn't look wet.

(thanks dear)
....but he was right. After few false starts I settled on using angelina.
Just few fibres gave me the effect I wanted.

So the salmon is stitched in place now under a small piece of tulle.

Grizzly in the Salmon stream

Almost there.
Some distortion develped in the body of the grizzly itself so I added a second layer of batting behind 'himself'. I'm hand stitching around the body of the bear to anchor the extra backing in place and to fill the 'wow'.

The fish is a study right now. He needs to look wet.
So far netting doesn't help and organza is too opaque. I painted a small piece of needled wool with a 'pearl' paint to see it adds the effect I want.
I may have to hand stitch over this small item with silver thread to get there.

But the 'bear' is essentially done.

Fleshing out the Bear

I'm working on the guy from the rump forward as there are many layers that change direction.
I also had to re set the ears a few times. Should only be few more days.

Salmon Stream

For the most part, the background is finished.
After re-aligning the lip of the cascade I finished it with white and grey gauze and with a bit of dirty cream.
Using roughly a dozen different thread colours, I worked the water. I may add some paint. That can wait.

Now I can look to finishing this bear.

Salmon Fishing

The house was clean, the Family came and went, the turkey was cooked and eaten, the dishes washed and put away.  Thanksgiving 2018 was put to bed.. It was a good party.

And today I went fishing.
I decided to work on the fish, now, to help finalize the dimensions of this piece. I left the fish off in the initial working, but I need to add it back now to balance the picture. I wasn't sure, at first that I would make it in wool but now I'm pleased I did.

It's about 8 inches in size but I probably won't permanently attach it until everything else is done. Though it's felted on a stabilizer, I'll leave it only pinned until the background is quilted and the bear is finished.

BTW - Blue Ribbon

My Grizzly took first prize in the Art Quilt category.

It was fun to see people's reactions.
They know to expect the unusual from me.

Grizzly ...... Finally

This guy has been bothering me for quite a while. I put it aside for a reason.
I made it wider.
And the water was wrong.
The water needs to be dark with highlights, not light with dark highlights.

Today I loosened the edges of the bear, undid some of the stitching holding the white water and removed the light blue water.
I replaced it with navy.
Whether the water is finished with cloth or thread,.......... I haven't decided yet.