I’ve done my part

The picture is the van before we unloaded. I took the picture from the cab as it was the only space left. All the stuff is now in the gallery looking dangerously like an exhibition. Tomorrow morning I will make my long (10 steps maybe) commute to the gallery and start demonstrating on the longarm. Now it is over to you. For this to work I need an audience. It's really not that far and the roads are quite major until the last 5 miles, so please do come and say hello and see the new quilts.

Background fill

I'm now heading my way back up the dragon filling in the background. I am having to add quite a lot of filler to keep the quilt as flat as possible. I don't think I said before but the fabric is another hand dyed sateen. I love Heide's fabrics and this piece was just the right size. I think I even have enough to bind the quilt.

Head

The head is really hard work. I’ve mostly finished the neck now, and the bits I haven’t filled in I know what I need to do. There is a little more to do on one front leg but really the head is slowing me down a lot. This is really where I wish I could draw and colour things. Well this counts as a crash course. I think an observer would think I hadn’t done much today as I have spent a lot of time with the machine stopped just staring into space or at the quilt. I have however been very busy thinking.

My tattooist spent some time trying to teach me about art and how to draw. I didn’t think much sank in but hopefully he got enough through to make all the difference. I think the main lesson that I’ve been using is essence of thing. He said all you needed to do was understand the essence of the thing and put that down on paper or n this case fabric. So when I get stuck I think about what is actually going on and what I need to show. I’ve spent a lot of time today thinking about nostrils and lips. How they work, how they fit together and what details you need to show to make them read as what they are supposed to be. I still haven’t quite got the inside of the nostril but I know what it looks and feels like so hopefully the colours will come good soon.

I’ve also been asking why a lot. I know this dragon is part cat, part horse and part dinosaur, so how do the back spines and in between bits work? If there is skin between the spines it must be attached to something, several somethings. It must grow from the back of the dragon and it is supported on the spines so they much also be covered in skin/scales. These sort of questions go on and on and on, but they do tell me exactly how the thing works and what it’s essence is. It may well look like staring onto space to others

I am going to try really hard to get an early night now. My back aches, a combination of concentrating too hard and helping to pick up a very heavy man I think, but apart from that I have an early start tomorrow to get to Warwickshire Quilters New Year lunch. I suspect  by the time I’ve done the talk I will have some ideas about nostrils and be desperate to get home and back to work.

Front feet

Feet

Well the hind feet are in. Just front feet, neck and head left.

Shading

This quilt has been one heck of a learning curve. I don’t draw and really this quilt is heading in that direction. Fortunately I have a starting sketch drawn by my tattoo artist to work from. That helps except it is the first sketch he made and he did edit it when he worked form it and now I am looking at it up close I am finding I need to change things. That’s really scary. The next problem is the shading. The first problem there is I have a limited number of shades of thread and blending them doesn’t entirely work, so I need to reduce all the shading on green areas down to 4 shades. To be fair I still haven’t quite managed that I hope I will come up with a cunning plan for the rear leg in shadow. 

Threads so far

There will be more I need for the face but these are what I am using so far on the dragon. I just wish I had more shades of all of them.

Starting to come together

Tail

I've mostly been working on butt and tail today.

Why I change needles so often

The needle on the right has just come out of my machine, the one to the left is a new needle. Hopefully you can see the used needle now has a completely blunt tip. The needle had only been in the machine since this morning and at the moment I am running the machine fairly slowly. Repeatedly punching through a quilt is really hard on needles.