Meow!

After much humming and ha-ing over my Flying Safari quilt I decided that quilting alone probably was't going to be enough to fill the massive black panels that are in between my pieced blcoks and all this week I've been pondering a paint-by-number style lion. I have no idea why I decided I wanted to make one of these but once it was in my head I just couldn't get rid of it. The basic thought now is that I could make various animals from fabric and stick them in each of the empty blocks.. we shall see how it goes!

I really had no idea how to make what I wanted - I've seen a few picture-patchwork creations around but never really looked at how to make them myself so I just sort of made it up as I went along. I'm thinking I can probably just sew all the bits on top of each other with my machine applique-style and then maybe throw in some decorative effects when I quilt it.

The biggest problem was that I can't draw to save my life so after half an hour of pathetic attempts at sketching I abandoned that plan and went with just cutting bits of fabric to approximately the right shape. The nose seemed like a good place to start being fairly central so I cut one of those, then some backing for it and just built it up from there. Inevitably it will end up a bit wonky as i'm just cutting bits by eye but i'm hoping it will come out ok. He still needs a big mane and a bit more shading but i'm pretty proud of it so far; I particularly like the eyes as he started to look a lot more like a lion than a scrappy mess once they were in place!

Lion; A Work In Progress