Close-Up

Sarah asked to see a closer photo of the threadwork, so here is one without any size restrictions.
Just click on the photo and it should end up huge on your screen……

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And Sarah, I have no idea if I “laid down the threads” correctly or not….I just did whatever would work!!!!

AND….after I just looked at it up REALLY close, I realized that I dont have any of her long whiskers and eyelashes showing so I may try to add some during the quilting process (which hopefully starts in just a few minutes!!!)

One Hump or Two

Today (Friday), I decided that I needed a break from work…..after all it is past “Tax Day”, so I planned to hit my studio around Noon.  The plan was to work on the Camel thread painting, but I just couldn’t motivate myself in there to work.

I finally realized why….I was scared to work on it because I was afraid that I would mess it up!!!!   I was reminded of a post that I had read from Leah Day where she was talking about this exact thing, and her comment was that “it was only a fat quarter of fabric”, so why worry about it.     I realized that the same thing applied to me, so with that in mind, I headed AWAY from my desk and TOWARD the machine.

I decided that I would give myself one hour and then re-evaluate.  At the end of the hour, I LOVED what I was doing and definitely wanted to keep on going.

Here are some photos of the progress…..

When you last saw it, it looked like this……

_3272070 My first step was to finish filling in the highlight areas and remove the blue lines.  Then I filled the other spaces with simple lines, trying to be careful to get the line directions correct……

 _4222321 I then sketched  over the larger areas with a slightly lighter color of thread, and then again with an even lighter shade.…..

_4222322 The next step was to work on the “basket” in the background.  I decided early on that I wasn’t going to worry if it looked like a basket, but just wanted to include a little more texture……_4222323

I then added some crossed lines…….

_4222324 Final step was a bit of shading and also some darker threads around the camel to make him stand out a bit from the background.

_4222325 I picked two fabrics for the borders, and, voila…..the top is finished…..

Camel Quilt TopIt has been a fun piece and I really enjoyed the thread painting.  Maybe I will try more of it in the future!!!!

Thank you Michael Palin….

 

I am always amazed at where inspiration can come from.   This past week, my husband and I were watching the Michael Palin documentary about the  Sahara Dessert, and up came this wonderful shot of a great camel.   My sweet husband immediately paused the show so that I could use my phone to take a photo of the TV screen….

photoI opened the photo in Photoshop and applied the “posterize”  function and came up with this…..

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Next, I covered the photo with a piece of “overhead projector” paper and traced this out with a sharpie……

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I picked out some fabrics and fused these three pieces together, traced the basic lines with a blue washable pen…..

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I added a piece of interfacing to the back of the fabric and started stitching….._3272070

At this point, my work life has taken over and I haven’t had time to get back to him, but I cant wait for a few minutes to add a bit more personality to him.

It is a bit daunting to work on because I know that I can so easily ruin the picture by simply using the wrong thread or shading the wrong area!!  Having said that I am doing the most important thing……

 

…….HAVING FUN!!!!!

 

Hope you are having fun too!!