Poppy Cock

During the Christmas season I was temporarily blocked out of my studio in order to set up a bed for family coming home for the holidays. I have a real problem when I don't have my studio to turn to and subsequently I couldn't stop thinking about what I could work on the minute the studio was back to being open. I had 3 days in the studio and I wanted to make the most of it. On my design wall I had a 2nd background that I had pinned together when I was making "Cock of the Rock". I figured that this was a great place to start so down came the background for "Poppy Cock". It took me a full day to play and tweak it until I was happy.

During the tweaking period, I had my daughters transgender kitty wanting attention...smack dab in the middle of what I was working on. Of course I'm allergic to cats...so anyone that knows anything about cats...knows that this was par for the course.

It took me another day to quilt the background. I was having trouble with my sewing machine and it just wouldn't work with the gold metallic thread that I really wanted, so I had to make do with a gold coloured embroidery thread. Still ok but not exactly what I wanted. On the 3rd day I worked on the rooster. In this picture he has no legs and I really wasn't happy with his wing.

I painted his face...OMG...I was so happy with his face. During the delicate painting of his face I had a surprise...transgender kitty decided to jump on my back because I wasn't paying him enough attention. So there I was hunched over my rooster, pallet in one hand and brush in the other, thinking OMG, if kitty jumps down on my work surface...all those little LOOSE bits of fabric feathers...are gone. Then of course my back got all itchy from the claws that went into my back and I was done for the day.

I finished stitching down all the feathers, added his feet, touched up the legs with some paint and he was essentially done. So now I'm contemplating beading this piece like I did with "Cock of the Rock". I know I'd really like it to be beaded but it would take months of work before I was satisfied. So he's not totally done but he's done for now.

Spring has Sprung

So now I had to get down and start the challenge and just forget about the damn size of that fabric...I was running out of time. I still didn't know what I was going to do. I just knew that I wanted a play on the words rather than the usual spring stuff...so I was playing with my watch and clock parts and pulling on this spring, when it sprung out of it's tiny home...in the shape of an "S". So then I started thinking about what I could do with the S in my design and came up with the spelling of "Spring". I left it on my desk and whenever my family walked by it, they would comment on how much they liked the layout. So off to the encaustic bench I went, with my LITTLE square of snow dyed fabric and my watch parts spelling out "Spring".