Garden of the Sun God-or-Harry the Heron comes back

Harry the Heron has been fabricated and fused onto baking parchment.

Needing to concentrate on the heron, I removed the papyrus and coneflowers that had been floating on the background. Doesn't he look great standing in front of his new home?  This is such an exciting part of the design process when everything is flowing well.

I wanted to make the coneflowers, one of my favorite images to use in quilts; look Egyptian.  So I drew them to fit in a diamond shape to become more angular.

A left-over Egyptian coneflower.

 I cut out more coneflowers than I needed, but that always leaves some to use for embroidery practice. If you look at my quilt Scraps of a Different Color you will see an extra one that has been inserted into a collage.  By doing this, I learned how I didn't want to embroider the flower in my Sun God quilt!  If you look at the close up images you will see how it was embroidered. Allowing yourself to play with your images and experiment with ideas is important because it helps you make better decisions when it comes to your more important work.

Here is Harry now standing among the papyrus and coneflowers.

The coneflowers have been pinned in place, with long graceful curving stems and a few green leaves to anchor the plant.  The papyrus are back in position, with a warm brown fabric that was eventually used for the stems. Things are looking good.

Why is Harry still pressed on baking parchment?  Because at this point in the design phase I want to be free to move the all elements around until I am completely sure everything is in the right spot. His beak, feathers and legs are too long and narrow to be able to shift around; so he stayed on paper until it was time to fuse everything on permanently.

Tune in next time, to see if Harry gets glued on!

Ann Fahl