Howling at the Moon!

HowooooooooOOOO!

Howling at the Moon
17.75" x 22.5"
pieced by Marissa, quilted by Lynette
100% cotton fabrics, Warm and Natural 100% cotton batting

Marissa had to get in on some of the fusible fun while she watched her older sister making dragons, so she drew out her own design and combed through the stash to put together this fun wall-hanging.

She didn't have any desire whatsoever to do the quilting, and I need practice, anyway, so with her permission, I figured Sapphira and I would do the Em & Roxy thing!  ;D  Well, as much as Marissa would let us. She didn't want the whole picture to be heavily quilted.

I had permission to design quilting that would visualize the sound of the howl, so I made vivid gold swirls that reach up from the wolf to caress the moon.

I took the liberty of putting snowflakes on the slopes. I didn't even ask - - - Well, I was having fun!

I just *love* how the moon is GLOWING in this shot!

She requested that I make the tree look all needle-y with them pointing up. So I did that with a lot of green thread-painting-quilting, and put some bark lines and knots on the trunk. After all that was done, Marissa said it looked like the tree needed snow on it, and I agreed.





So, out came the white again and another round of needle-y stitching, only this time I quilted it over the trunk also.  If you look closely, you can still see the knots showing under the snowlines. . .




I didn't have any trouble quilting over the fusibles on this piece. Perhaps because the batting was Warm & Natural 100% cotton instead of the poly that was on Hugs and Kisses (had some issues with needles getting gunky and stitches skipping on that one).

Still, I need more practice with motion control (see the bobbles when I needed to move my hands over during the howl swirls?) and stitch lengths. Those issues show up great in this shot.

Only had a little spot of tension freak-out on the white. Not sure why that happened - it was the same thread top and bottom, and it fixed itself.

Just need to hand stitch the lower seam of the hanging sleeve down tonight when we watch a show. This is finish #19 for 2011!


We had intended to put a bead on for the wolf's eye, but when we auditioned a couple, it just wasn't right. The markings on the gray fabric happened to fall in such a perfect way for his face, that we left the bead off.  I do think that perhaps the next time we're over the bridge, we'll step into Michael's and see about picking up some of those heat-glue-on crystals so she can put stars up in the top of the night sky. Don't you think that would be just perfect?

How-ooooooOOOOOOoooo!!