Cassowary is Finished

Wow...I worked for most of last week on this to get him done and today I finished him.

I am just a little bit proud of this...nothing about this project came easy to me. Each section had its own challenging little things and some of them I did get right and some of them I did not.

In general, I think I thread painted a bit heavily in parts and some of the shading is a bit wonky, but I am more than happy with it. Actually cannot believe I managed to do this.

And here he is...the finished Cassowary done in an online workshop with Sophie Standing...must say I now know this bird intimately...looked at every little hair, every shading, the way the funny red tubular things run...

Can't tell you how impressed I am with my handiwork. Learned a lot about thread painting and how important tiny detail is (and how easy it is to get things wrong). 

Close up

Now it's back to quilting for me!

Karin

Progress on WIPs

Had my second day of the Elizabeth Hartman workshop. Had not done any more work on the blocks other than cutting my pieces out for the owl block.

Well, the owl did take the whole session from 9.30am to 2.30pm. It had so many tiny pieces and was a bit challenging for my brain in terms of getting them oriented the right way around. Worked very slowly as I did not want to mess it up. I only need one owl for the wall hanging and I definitely did not want to do another one.

Here it is...the owl

Came out rather nice although I think I should have chosen more muted colours for the middle section. My colours just seem to blend together. Good to know though, will remember this if I have to do another one. Now I only got the thistles, hedgehog and another fox to go.

This will have to wait a bit though, as I am also doing the Cassowary project run by Sophie Standing in an online workshop and it is taking forever to advance from one section to the next. I think since last time I managed to complete the beak and chin and am now halfway up the horn. Well, I wanted a challenge and I must say, this is very challenging for me as I never done thread painting before.

So my thread painting looks much more like thread embroidery...my stitching tends to become very build up very quickly. Probably because I am making lots of mistakes so I always have to go over things again until I feel that I got it right. You have no idea of what this is like for a seasoned freemotion quilter with a healthy perfectionist streak. Looking at my scribbling it is almost torturous! Mind you there were a few moments when I thought that I was getting the hang of it, particularly when doing the chin area...that jelled really well with me for some reason and I am really proud of how that turned out with the yellow markings in it. Today I did the left half of the horn and I must say that was extraordinarily tricky...still not completely happy with it but sometimes it is easier to just step back for a while and try again another day.

Enjoying the challenge though, it's good to push yourself to do something completely out of your comfort zone once in a while.

One thing is for sure, this is going to take a while... 

Linking up to Midweek Makers over at Quilt Fabrication.

Karin