Animals of the Fen

As promised, here come the animals to populate the fen quilt.  

My friend, as I said earlier, specified particular species of each animal.  It wasn't hard to find photos of each via google.  I also found info on each animal's size, so I could reproduce them somewhat in scale.  

I put each photo into Illustrator (I imagine any program would work somewhat the same, but I'm nowheres near a computer expert).  I drew a box the size I wanted the animal to be, and scaled the photo accordingly.  Then I printed them out, traced each onto paper, pinned them on the quilt, and checked it out with my friend.  I posted a photo of the quilt with paper animals in place in a previous post.

When the sizing was all set, I used the tracings as patterns to cut the fabrics for the basis of each animal.  Again, the fabrics were all stabilized with iron-on interfacing before I cut.  I stitched the animals in place, using a zig-zag with invisible thread.

 
Then I made another tracing, this time with details also.  I basted these over the plain bodies, and embroidered through the paper, using the photos as guides for color.  It works best using a stab stitch, so the needle goes exactly where I want it to go.  I used a quilters pin to finish tearing the paper along the perforations made by the stitching, so I could remove the paper.  Sometimes, that meant scooping under the threads where there was a solid area of color.  I had to be gentle so as not to disturb the stitches too much.  

Here are the critters:

The Bog Buckmoth (3/4")

Dragonfly (1")

Green Frog (1 3/4")

Eastern Painted Turtle (3 3/4")

 White-tailed Deer (1 3/4" tall)

(The deer was appliquéd with a straight stitch.  The zig-zag looked horrible on the ultra suede, and wasn't really necessary for fray control anyway.)

Harrier or Marsh Hawk ( 1 1/2")

 

 (I pulled the grey cross threads out of the back wing to lighten it up.  Well, it happened once by mistake, and I liked it, so I pulled out some more....)

 I also added detail to the kayak.

And the overall effect so far: