The Rug is Done and Onward to the Egret and Heron

I got my rug done from the Ruth Humphrey class despite my Bernina acting badly.  I think I may need to loosen the bobbin thread as the old 830 usually sews through anything.  I had to go over the outside row numerous times.  I am pretty pleased despite the randomness of the scraps.

You might recognize the next two pictures as I had them printed on fabric and then quilted them.  I gave those two projects recently to a silent auction supporting coastal nature efforts here in NC.  I had always wanted to take a more "Ruth McDowell" approach with them.  I volunteered to do a demo at our next art quilt group on the Ruth McDowell techniques so had to get started.

It has been a tough couple of weeks as I have had a horrible cold and no energy to do anything.  Didn't have a real meal until last night!  Husband is down with the same thing so he hasn't been nagging about "what's for dinner" like usual!

This is one of my favorites and did quite well at the auction I understand.  

 The first steps are to convert to black and white and make sure you have lots of contrast.  Then you use software to "posterize" it.  These are the two photos converted to that step.

This one posterized especially well I think if  you look at the Great Egret, you can see the delineations of white to grey.  

The next step is to trace around all the areas.  I put clear plastic on top of the image to do this.  Somehow I managed to have reversed both images but will take care of reversing them back later.  I then blew these images up to four times their current 8 1/2 x 11 size.  I used an online program to do this.  The one I used to use now charges for this.  

Now that I have these blown up images, the real work begins.  I will take tracing paper and place over the image and try to deconstruct it using straight lines.  You can use curves as well but I like to try to not copy nature entirely -- make it a little abstract!  I usually do my own thing in the backgrounds as well, sometimes creating my own (in fact usually creating my own!)

I did manage to get out of the house yesterday and ran into the small herd of deer that live in Ft. Fisher.  They nicely posed for me.  I counted eight in the herd.  A truck came in and disturbed them so here they are heading out.  

Here are six of them.  Look at the top of the tail on the one on the far left.  They all have this very dark top on their tails.  Some of them are very dark brown as well -- very striking.

There  have been Snowy Egrets down at Ft. Fisher the last couple of weeks and they are getting their summer feathers.

Posing on one of the posts!