The last few days have been spent refining the background choices and sewing things together. I re-did the chest area as I was not liking that at all. The photo shows light weeds to the front but I’m thinking it’s starting to look too busy, maybe because I have more yellow in the background than the photo does, but I like that. Perhaps a darker foreground would ground it better.

It has been SO hot! Yesterday was the 10th consecutive day of temps over 100 and everything is looking stressed. We put out 10 five gallon buckets of water with a little hole in the bottoms to give a nice soaking to the newest trees and roses that were planted this spring. Thankfully we got a nice rain last night which should give relief to the rest. Temps today should only get to the high 90’s! I guess that’s good news since this morning our air conditioner quit! Someone is supposed to come out to check on it later today, but it’s already getting hot in here and it’s only 9 o’clock. Time to get out the fan!

Tuesday I took some time off and went to the Kaw Valley Quilt Guild meeting to turn in the Butterfly piece.  It was well received and it was fun to see all of the other offerings which were all very different! It will be fun to see them all laid out together at the silent auction in the fall. After, I shopped at Sarah’s for some large scale grass for the foreground of the elk – found three possibilities, but nothing really better than what I already had.

Yesterday I worked at filling in some background and sewing together some of the sections. I’m liking how the yellow areas of the green hand dye bring in some light and life to the background. Also cut and laid in some of the dark body areas, but they are not ready yet for sewing. As the background areas come closer to the viewer they need to have more detail and yet still work with the more abstract distant background. It’s also important to keep contrast between the elk’s body and the background to overcome nature’s desire to have the animal disappear!

So yesterday I was going to post an update, but when I went to download the photos my camera batteries were dead.

I had mentioned that I thought that the elk’s butt might need to be lighter

but I decided that the original was light enough.

Notice that I did tweak the antlers a bit! They are smoother now.

Filling in some background, I will use some lighter yellow areas of the hand dyed green. I think this dark shoulder is a little too much, it needs to be lighter.

This one is too light, though.

I think this one will work. But that highlight is too light and will need fixing.

This morning I was reminded that a challenge I had committed to was due soon – like next week I think!!

This is the fat quarter that I have to use:

Funny how the background, which is light blue with yellow spots reads about the same as my gray design wall. My piece has no info on it as to the designer or the fabric company, but it is certainly an interesting bit of fabric that must have piqued my interest at the time.

Accepting the free fat quarter meant that I accepted the challenge to make a small wall hanging  no larger than 18 x 24″ to donate to the guild’s charity silent auction.  I decided that I could get a butterfly out of it so yesterday I did a sketch and made a pattern for a fantasy butterfly that I hope to start today. The elk will have to take a back seat for the time being!

Most of the past week’s work was for naught as it has been done and redone. I started out being true to the photo, but the thing is, nature likes camouflage and she does it so well! The antlers were just blending in – too much work for too little impact! In nature most everything is medium tones. I had to go really light to get the contrast that the piece needed. But it does bring in some needed lights. We are also overwhelmed with green and I liked the subtle addition of blue even though it was not in the original photo, you know there is sky up there somewhere!

I will probably still tweak the antlers and I am thinking about lightening the rump.

Yesterday the temperature was over 100 with a record breaking heat index for here of 118 and today promises more of the same so I will be staying inside to sew!

Del’s comment: Nostril? Eye? Any progress is better than none — makes me think perhaps in progress shots are not the best idea. Nothing is ever set in stone and I am not opposed to taking out a section – even when quilting is in progress if I am not happy with it! In this case the eye is there. The nostril is not there yet. I have not been terribly motivated to work on this; I am finding it a challenge to work without much contrast and I am hoping that getting the antlers in place will pull in the needed lights.

Over a period of a few days working in the morning while it is still cool, I re-did these steps from the deck to the shade garden. The steps at the top were too shallow and not well spaced and I thought, dangerous.

Also the planting spaces at the top were full of big day lilies reaching for the sun with long spindly leaves threatening to trip you. So I dug out a big wheelbarrow load and replaced them with some tiny euonymus, coleus and fuchias.

My husband is doing well but is of course quite bored! I am finding out how much he really did for me before, which made it possible for me to do the quilting things that I love to do. I have been so busy doing all of the routine things, cooking, cleaning, even cleaning the pump and filters for the fish pond that I have had very little time to sew.

I had finished the freezer paper pattern which involves converting the printout of the original photograph by Tammy Patterson (click on “Elk” in the tags to go back to info about the photo and the “why” of this piece) to the large format before the accident. First I enlarged that and converted it to black and white and with tracing paper figured out where the sewing lines could be. That was enlarged again and transferred to overhead projector film.

This was projected up on the freezer paper which had been prepared to the final dimensions – I think about 41 x 46 ish. All of the lines are then copied to the paper side of the freezer paper in the mirror image of the finished piece so that when these pieces are cut out and ironed onto the wrong side of the fabric, you will get the proper orientation.

These are the fabrics that I pulled from my stash to start with. I will not use them all and may add different ones as I go along but I don’t think I will need to shop for more this time.

This past week I have not had a lot of time to sew, but I am pretty happy with what I have made so far.

YES!! There was NO spam this morning, just real messages from real friends! What a relief…… Loretta, all three of yours came through fine.

Yesterday I had a machine quilting class at Stitching Traditions in Topeka, what a fun group of ladies. Makes me want to get sewing again and I am nearly ready to get started.

What’s up next? I’m planning to do an Elk.

Photo by Tammy Patterson © 2009 all rights reserved.

The photo was taken by the same photographer that took last year’s Mountain Goat Kids and it needs to be finished by fall for another “Inspirations” exhibit. That’s the collaborative one where the artist interprets a photographer’s work and I am so lucky to be working with Tammy again!