Out of sight, out of mind

Cool picture, right! Well..yesterday was our small Aussome fiber group meeting. My friend, Mary, brought her picture (same as above) and asked if I remembered it! YES, I did remember it, but I forgotten all about the picture. A few years ago, Mary asked if I wanted to make an art quilt with her. She was going to do the tree and I was going to do the woodpecker. Needless to say we never finished this project which isn't really like either of us but guess life got in the way. I went directly home from our meeting and found my 'woodpecker' project!

So onto the story...I was pretty stoked about working with Mary so I jumped right into this project. I was heavy into using print paste and fiber reactive dyes to paint with so that's what I did.

I traced the woodpecker onto white fabric and then proceeded to paint it with the thickened dyes. He turned out pretty good I thought but I did make two of them (above is an extra woodpecker I have).

This next picture shows my woodpecker in progress (you can see why I selected to work from this painted piece as the colors are much brighter. After I dye painted the 'bird', I sandwiched him between batting and backing and finished the edges off with satin stitch.

I then proceeded to attach actual feathers from my birds and store bought feathers onto the piece! I remember working on this piece in Florida and I think it was the first year we spent the winter there. I told the ladies yesterday that I thought I had at least covered the bottom of the tail but it doesn't look like I got that far. I remember spending lots of time attaching just these few feathers! Picking and choosing! It doesn't look like many but there really are lots of feathers attached!

And here is my stash of feathers! Yep, all from my birds..from cockatiels, to Australian Grass Parakeets to a Blue Front Amazon..lots of feathers to choose from but I can only use the black/blue/grey ones!

I'll have to see if Mary really wants to finish this. She said she never started on her tree so I don't feel so bad...but I'd be willing to finish it if she still wants to. If not, I might just finish it sometime myself. I don't have that many WIP's or UFO's or whatever you want to call them but this one will be at the top of the short stack for sure! As I said in my title of this post...Out of sight, out of mind. Hence, an unfinished 'bird'!