A Gift for My Brother

My brother lives in the desert, and I try to create a desert-themed card or hanging for his birthday each year.  Last year, I used Kokopelli as my inspiration.  This year, I used the bear pictograph.  While I was working on this year's card, I happened to take Lola Jenkins' "Thread Art" workshop on Craftsy.  She is a great teacher and she really encourages her students to just do.  There are no mistakes!

One of my fellow students posted the class project quilted with four quadrants of closely spaced lines.  Wow!  What an awesome idea for the background of my little project.

Well, now I had my subject and the background quilted.  How to color it.  I really wanted to use colored pencils like Lola demonstrated in her class, but all my attempts ended up muddy instead of subdued multi-color.  I finally used a Stained yellow marker for the outline and Shiva iridescent oil sticks for the interior of the bear. 

I set the project aside so I could cogitate on how I wanted to cut my little masterpiece.  Originally, I had planned to make a 8" x 6" card, but that was before I did all of the marvelous background quilting.  Yesterday afternoon, I picked up my scissors and cut it with wavy edges to suggest the piece was done on a piece of hide.

Next step, how was I going to finish the edges?  I didn't want a satin stitched border or blind facing.  So I decided to go with a widely spaced zigzag.  After I finished zigzagging around the edge, inspiration struck.  Why not run two or three rows of straight stitching around the edge?

For this piece, I felt I had come up with a perfect solution.  I will also be using this finish on some of my card-sized quilts.

The final problem was how to provide a way to hang this little  (9" x 7") quilt?  I'll share my solution with you tomorrow.