shhdesigns: Details make the Big Picture.

Thursday, 10 September 2015

Details make the Big Picture.

Remember this collage from the beginning of August?

A closer look, some people thought it might be an underwater quilt.

These sort of look like tentacles?

Underwater plants?

Quilted look maybe not underwater?

Curly cues and beads.

More curly cues. Currents in the blue were fun to free hand machine quilt.

3-D elements. along with freezer paper turned applique and fused feathers.

A leg walking through different heights of grasses.

Second leg.

Nesting material of left over threads.

The whole picture, meet Bird Brain designed by Dougal Ann Walker of The Freckles Collection. Dougal is a member of the Fraser Valley Quilters' Guild and designed this as a challenge for one of our guild shows. It was so popular she released it as a pattern. In March 2012 I started this piece in a guild workshop that Dougal lead. Click here to see some birds evolving. After the workshop I packed everything up and didn't touch it until August.

I had lots of fun with my domestic machine free motion quilting this. No marking everything came to me in a very organic way. I used a lot of different variegated threads and some solid ones. After some steam pressing it hangs nicely in place.

I just noticed it almost looks like a reflection in the blue/green of the feet walking near water.

A look at the backside, I used plain muslin on the back and matched the bobbin threads with the top threads. I had fun with those curly cues.

Avoiding the 3-D tail feathers were a bit of a challenge.

The body 3-D feathers were challenging to quilt around.

Loved having fun making feathers and grass.

I bit of puckering with by background fabric but did well I think.

I like making my hanging sleeve match my binding in case it slips a bit.

Here is a picture of Dougal's original Bird Brain, the challenge fabric was the blue used for the legs. she also did a pieced square background that I chose to make as strips and one colour for sky.