Well, she's sort of finished. :)  She is finished, in that she has a backing, a hanging sleeve, and a label, but as I looked at these pics that I've posted, I can see that there's some tweaking that needs to happen.




Similarly, I like the rocks, but I think there's a little bit of a flat effect happening. Not that it's "flat" in a 3 dimensional way  - I do like very much that these rocks bring the eye forward and help to show that the cliff rocks are in the *background* not the foreground - but I think they're just sitting there doing nothing you know?

Not that rocks *do* a lot, but they're not doing much for this piece.  Maybe the addition of some fuzzy moss - but not TOO fuzzy - perhaps a little moonlight glittering on the wet? That kind of thing.





But despite all those "complaints", I'm pretty happy with her. Just a few little tweaks and she'll be good to go.

I'm going to take a break from her for a little while though - she's not due until July 23 - and I need to step away for a bit.

Something new next week!

So, remember when I said that I thought I was going to have to add some washes to make my night time scene less "early morning" and more "night"?  


Well, "Ta Dah!!!"  :)






and then added more black to the mixture and did two or three washes of the black.  When I started getting into the navy blues and blacks, I was adding washes to the pond water as well, to darken it up.




You can see the progress side by side here (that pic is clickable if you want to look at it in a bigger size) - those four pictures represent 15-20 washes in total!

I'm totally in the home stretch now, I have probably only two or at the most three hours left on the piece. Phew!

Come on back on Friday for the big finish!


P.S. - It's Wednesday, so I'm linking up with the Needle And Thread Network - please check out what other Canadian fiber bloggers are up to!

I had hoped to show you a finished piece today, but I grossly underestimated how long it would take me to braid enough embroidery floss to make the mermaid's hair - not to mention, some of the hand quilting I've done hasn't turned out so well, so I need to re-do it. :SIGH:




But I DID make some rocks. I knew I knew how to do it, and I thought if I pulled out By The Sea from last year, just looking at those rocks would remind me how I did it. That didn't work - I pulled them out, petted them, and thought "how pretty", but couldn't remember how I did them, exactly.



Bu then I found and  read my own instructions on how to make them (gee, I'm glad that this is a process blog!), except, this time, I broadened the colours of roving that I used, and put them on a gray silk background, rather than stablizer and pinned 'em all up.


Since I didn't have very much of that grey scrim left, I inserted into my rocks for more texture instead.

Once I had it all pinned down, I needle felted it.



And when I was done, I had this piece of fabric. It was  sooooooooo SOFT, I just wanted to pet it like a bunny. :)  Alas, I needed to cut it up...



...into rock shapes.

Which I put onto some fabric I wouldn't use for much else (a heavy cotton upholstery fabric sample I was gifted by a friend - said friend gave me banker's box full of such samples and they've come in very handy in a lot of applications.

There's a lot of that stuff in the "America Now" series, for instance. Painting them over covers a multitude of sins!)



But back to this piece, my rocks  needed to be on that background, because I wanted to quilt them before I put them on my painted background.

So, we're getting closer!

I have to finish braiding Ms. Mermaid's hair and fix up my hand quilted elements - and though I've added the washes I talked about last week to take my background from early morning to the night I intended, I think I have to add two more washes of purple and blue (and maybe teal) to the sky to further differentiate it from the cliff.

But, we're in the home stretch now! Finished piece on Wednesday or maybe Friday.

Until then...

I was just being tongue in cheek, but how cool would it be to write a story about a mermaid and illustrate it with quilts?

These are the beads that auditioned for the piece,


And this is the drawing that I started out with.

Also, remember this:



that I did just about a year ago?  I did it AGAIN while I was quilting the background -hence the switch to beading the mermaid.

Only this time, it was a 70/10 rather than a 14/90,  and it was just at the tip; so no hospital visit was necessary - after a short, intense argument I managed to convince BSP to pull it out with a pair of pliers (this time, is was just straight in rather than curved through) and I've had no ill effects. Be careful out there! ;)


See you on Monday with some rocks - and maybe the finished piece!

It was Canada Day yesterday, so I was golfing and generally celebrating being Canadian and forgot it was Monday and that I was supposed to post!


So, the background is done now - as you can see, from when I left you last, I've added foliage and the pond.  This is the background in it's "finished" state (I'll be adding quilted elements to the background and foreground later), but I thought I was already finished earlier.






And this is what it looks like now. I think the background's done, but I may end up adding some washes of blue to make the sky darker - we'll see once I've quilted the background and added some quilted elements.

Anyway - stay tuned... more on Friday! And for my American friends, enjoy your holiday tomorrow!


* and linking up with WIP Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network.  Go and have a look at what other Canadian fiber bloggers are up to!