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The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

Well….here’s a question for you: Should you do “studies” before attempting a large piece? I have wanted to do a big quilt with a life-size pair of Ivory-Billed woodpeckers (who are some 20 inches long) and near life-sized tree-trunks. As part of a working arrangement with a yarn company, I thought I’d do a study in preparation. Now that I’ve done the study, well, I’ve lost some of the impetus to do the larger quilt. Here’s what I’ve done so far (and please, this is a work in progress and the tree trunk WILL change a bit!):

And here’s a detail which shows some of the dense quilting in the background:

Well…maybe if you click on it you can see the dense quilting in the background? There is a bird flying up near the top, and lots of tree trunks quilted into the background. Trust me!

The bird is done on black cloth with “eyelash” yarn for the feathers. I couched the feathers down to the black, then layered up the whole thing with Dissolve (water soluble stabilizer on top) and quilted the daylights out of him, to “tame” the eyelash yarn so he’s look feathered and not furry. I painted the cloth on the bill and crest (which got so dense I had to slice it so it will rest flat—when I finally applique him to the surface of the quilt I’ll fill in the gaps). The blob on the left is where his claw will be, but didn’t want to trim the cloth until I’m ready to stitch the claws…too much fraying nuisance otherwise.

The tree trunk (and the central background for that matter) are my hand-dyeds, then I couched a bunch of chenille yarns onto the trunk. I’m going to add some chopped up bits of yarn, then shreds and strips of brown tulle, then some cool “Halloween” black spiderwebbed tulle (which looks like the cracks and crenellations on bark when it is on top of the treetrunk) over that…trust me, it looks better.

Anyway, for the big quilt I had planned black borders (or nearly black), with writing on them. The big quilt is / was to be about 4 feet by 6 feet or so….a “very impressive” size. Well…here’s the problem. I’ve lost some (ok, a fair amount to most of) the urge to make the large quilt. It would have been a better quilt than this one, but who’s gonna buy such a big monster anyway? I still kinda want to make it, but……

As for this one, the edges are looking a bit pale. I LOVE the Bali Fabrics Batik in the borders, but may have to take it off and use something darker to balance the trunk and bird. Although binding might do the trick. What do you think? IF I were to switch to dark brown / nearly black, I could then do the original idea, too, but in smaller size……….. hmmm… Better sleep on it. And tomorrow is (oh joy of joys) driving 60 miles / 90 minutes to Bangor to get the car serviced and find out if that ominous sound near my right rear wheel, for the past 3 months, is going to be expensive to fix or not). More anon……

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