A Start on the Challenge

We had so many ideas during our holiday it was difficult to know where to begin but I decided to pick 9 items from my list of images to use in the piece.  7 of the 9 were animals so I thought that was a good idea for the theme. 

To tie the images together I am going to create a canal route in patchwork to represent our journey and I'll incorporate some of the features we saw.  'Flying Geese' triangles are used for locks and create an impression of movement and the canal will be given banks in squares of green, brown and grey.  I've also added a railway line and some bridges which will be embroidered on.  

A very rough plan of the design with the approximate sizes of the images.  The patchwork squares would be a 1/2 inch square.

As you can see in the photo I have tried out making the banking squares irregular and varying the width of the canal squares but further experimentation is required before I make a final decision on this. 

My first piece was creating William de Morgan's red cockerel running boldly across a plate.  I have tried for a realistic copy of the original and fortunately had some bright red and purple batik material in our pack from the show and some matching silk thread.  I started by drawing the outline, then traced it onto interfacing and cut it out.  I stuck the cut out onto the batik and then cut round it to go give an accurate copy of my motif.  I stuck the motif onto calico to give a neutral background.  I have found interfacing and fabric glue are very useful tools in this type of work.  

The feet and chest feathers were added in stem stitch and the white details picked out with running stitch.  Unfortunately the beak fell victim to the added detail and the end of it disintegrated; I remedied this with some more stem stitch in the silk and for continuity picked out his crown in a similar fashion.  

The bold cockerel

The little khaki bear was an obvious choice for this project and his outline was very simple.  He was cut out from brown batik and stuck to pale blue fabric as described above.  The blanket stitching edging reflects his home-made origins from a khaki blanket.  I had experimented with more complex stitching on his features but in the end decided keeping it simple was more appropriate. 

The khaki bear, I have tried to keep true to his character including his skew whiff eyes.

The little scottie dog represents the Jewellery Museum, it was a charm for a bracelet which was being stamped out during the demonstration.  Having drawn the profile I had all sorts of ideas for the background but after some experimental stitching I came back to the simple idea of edging the motif in a close blanket stitch.  Then I spent some time practising the blanket stitch to make sure I could achieve a reasonable finish round the tight bends.  Once again the fabric glue and interfacing were a great help in placing the motif for sewing. Luckily I had some blue/grey background material which is printed with flecks of gold (you may recognise the curtains from the bungalow!).  This was ideal for representing the gold dust and trimmings which were so carefully collected for recycling in the Jewellery Factory.  

The Scottie Dog charm

So 3 down and more fun to be had with this holiday challenge.