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Around the last ribbon of my quilt, on the red, I have stitched my spirit people who appear regularly in my quilts as spirits of the land or reminders of people or civilizations past. They are much like a continuous chain of paper dolls like the ones we cut from paper as kids. Here I have stitched heavily around the spirit people images to make them raised.
Planning on some trapunto for the red spirit people ribbon and for the green emu ribbon so I added batting (wadding) under those areas. I stitched around my spirit people and then cut away the excess. The hope is that the little chain of people will stand up slightly proud. With the green emu ribbon, I quilted around every emu quite heavily filling in the area, and then trimmed back to the edge of the ribbon. My hope is that when it is sandwiched the emu ribbon will be raised compared to other areas.
Photo by Helen Godden
Now the snake in the middle, while he was sleeping I stitched down the centre of his body in a lovely variegated thread but it had a hot pink in amongst the colour range so after it was stitched I used my red fabric marker and colour over the hot pink turning the stitches red. I also coloured over the purple to make it more aubergine (plum) in colour. Because the body of the snake is black, if I missed with the marker...it didn't matter, it didn't show up. I often work on black as I find it adds high contrast and a drama to the work. When I am teaching students I tell them that at the end of a quilt, instead of going over it with "a fine tooth comb" (as the saying goes) looking for stray threads or missed stitches, I go over my quilt with a black fabric marker. Any stitch in the wrong place on a black background can be made invisible with a black marker. Now that's our little secret. The snake has the same dot stitch running down his back gradually decreasing in size towards the tail.
Photo by Helen Godden
Towards the middle are four Lyre birds, another of Australia's unusual creatures. The Lyre bird is a small bird, about the size of a skinny chicken, brown and dull in color but amazing range of vocals. The name comes from his lyre shaped tail. But also as he imitates all different birds, animal and noises from its environment to show off to his potential mates. In this manner, he lies about his identity! Such a bloke, showing off to lure a girl and not telling the truth about himself.
Back in June, I created a miniature 12 inch square for my state quilt guild show. This was a mini Ricky Rhapsody with the Lyre bird as the central feature. This piece was all applique, predominantly in reverse with the purple layer on top of the hand dyed gold/green. I worked zig zag satin stitch in free motion making it easier to get around the curves and give the stitch a look of calligraphy; changing from thick to thin back to thick as curves are followed. On the bird tails I worked on my sewing machine with one hand on the stitch width dial, increasing the width of the satin stitch as I went along, varying from 2.5mm/1/8" to 8mm/1/2" at its widest, in metallic gold. Looks good hey! It is a good practice to have a go at an idea in a smaller version before launching into a huge piece...good advice if you can be so disciplined.
Helen Godden
Photo by Helen Godden
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