I thought you might enjoy seeing this big fella that was outside my door the other night. I hope he’s out there eating all the mosquitoes!
I am a bit behind working on my piece for the Totem exhibition in October. I had an idea but it is a large sculptural piece and I don’t have the supplies to make it. So I decided to go another direction but was having problems thinking what my totem is. I have never really considered that I might have a totem. It is supposed to be an animal or plant that represents your or your clan. But that definition didn’t help much. So what to do. Then I remembered my prehistoric bird doodle. Perhaps that would work?
This is the doodle after I played with a scan of it in Photoshop. It was really quite ugly before that. But I do like the bird now. Kind of a cross between a turkey and an ostrich. I decided to use some screen printed fabric for a background. I found a piece of “acid” green linen to use for the bird body.
The bird body does look more yellow here than green but it is green. I added some tail feathers and I am going to couch down some yarn for his legs.
Here are some more parts of the piece after some free motion machine stitching.
I am going to add a bunch of hand stitching now and see what I come up with. If you have a piece that you’d like to enter into the Totem exhibition, you can find all the information here.
Ruth Lane Art 
Reblogged this on Tangled, A Fiber Arts Collective and commented:
Have you started working on a piece to enter into our upcoming exhibition, Totem? This is a post from my personal blog showing what I have been working on for my entry.
Hey, I like it. But…I am a little strange, so don’t get too excited. lol
Thanks Judy! 🙂
It reminds me of cave paintings Ruth! Look forward to seeing the finished piece. 🙂
Thanks Judith – the bird definitely reminds me of a cave painting too. Now I just need to think of a name for him.
Can’t wait to see the finished piece Ruth. Are we looking at 2 different pieces in the photos above or front and reverse sides of the same pieces. I love the first image of the textile bird (3rd photo down) but can’t figure out how the angular yellow pieces fit in, are they reverse appliqué?
Thanks Teri – the reason you can’t figure it out is that I just showed you parts of the whole. I didn’t show the entire piece. There are multiple pieces of fabric that are overlapping and I am stitching them all together with use of the machine stitching that I showed and then I’m doing Kantha type stitching over the whole piece with perhaps some other stitches like French knots and seed stitch thrown in for texture.
Can’t wait to see what you come up with! I am a bit behind as well . . .
Thanks Louise – I can usually get it done once I get the design down and get started.