Starting a new piece - at last!

The Egyptian project is behind me now - at least until the first talk booked for later in the year.

I have begun a new piece. Hurray. Nice to have a different subject to concentrate on.

It is, however, a bit unseasonal, although the weather over the last couple of days could challenge that. It has been dreadful. Cold, wet and windy. No snow though and this piece has snow in it.

I took a series of photos in the snow last winter and created a digitally constructed image by combining two of them and then putting an effect onto the image with a filter in Photoshop giving a stylised image.

This is the image I created. I had it in mind to use it in some way for a textile piece but didn't know what technique I would use at the time. After completing the last quilted piece, I decided that an art quilt would be the best way to present this image as a textile piece.

I printed the image out by selecting smaller areas, printing them and then joining them together to give me an actual size print. This was traced onto a piece of white poly cotton. Once traced, I mixed fairly thin acrylic paints and painted the cotton. The photo isn't too good as I was standing precariously on a swivel chair to gain enough height to take the photo. I didn't have anywhere with enough light to pin it up. The colours are coming through from the surfaces underneath but you can see how it was looking if you squint??? It is meant to be viewed from a distance.

I made a sandwich with 2oz wadding/batting and white voile. It was ready to stitch. I matched the threads and decided to be a bit brave by using metallic threads for the sheep. Starting from the central area, i free machined the sheep and the track marks in the snow.

It is in the very early stages so don't judge it yet. There is a LOT of stitching to do. Will keep posting as I go.

Cheers for now.