My rooster is finally finished and I am quite happy with it. I went in and added colored pencil. I was particularly happy with the pale blue that matched the sky and helped to hide some of the areas that the colors bled a bit to much. I added bead work to the cloud, the tail, the wing and I also found a perfectly colored stone heart. I believe it is a jasper. 

 I am quite into instant gratification, so doing the bead work was excruciating. Especially since I almost finished the first feather only to find out I didn't have enough beads to finish it and had to rip it out. I almost gave up right then. But every night I dutifully sat myself down to work on it. Phew! 

 The next piece in my mind would be a Mucha. I have a bunch of framed Mucha pieces in my bedroom and I think they would make stunning art quilts. Maybe I will wait awhyle  before I even go there because my original bright idea included bead work. Hehehe. Then again maybe it would look great without beads on it.  I think I will just play in my journal tonight.

I recently signed up for a class called Thread Art by Lola Jenkins on Craftsy. I made the class project of the Girl With The Pearl Earring. What a great experience it was. I had no idea it would be so easy to do free motion stitching. I watched all the lessons and then began my project. Working with colored pencils is something I am familiar with from my card making. It is my preferred method of coloring.  If you are heavy handed with colored pencils like I am, you should place a paper towel under your working hand. I ended up dragging the green from my hat over my finished face and had to try and lift the color off with an eraser. 

This project was allot easier than I thought it would be. It was allot of fun and the things I learned can be used in other projects. She just has a slight olive complection now. LOL. 

The background was supposed to look like a curtain. I started with the squiggly lines and then changed to a swag like design. The background isn't exactly what I would have chosen, but I think the lady turned out very well and I am so pleased with her and she stands out well enough that I can ignore the background. The edging is some leftover material from my purse that I made a few months back. I didn't even realize that I was using the same colors. 

The rooster is my next project. I used Dyna Flow to color him. When using Dyna Flow, I found that it spread much more than expected, so unless you like that look, be careful. 

This piece is not finished yet. I need to decide if I want to use pencils or Shiva paint sticks on it. 
This is my second piece and I decided to remove the cover from my feed dogs as when there was any thread build up it would cause problems. I found it was much easier to manuver this way since the free motion foot for my machine doesn't lay as low as the regular foot, making it a much more pleasant experience. 

I also found that I would be going along pretty well and then my mind would wander off for even a second causing me to have to stop and rethink about where I wanted the thread to go. This was particularly a problem with my pebble area. I was doing nice loopy figure 8's and all of a sudden I found myself going in strait linesI am still working on this piece and will post a picture when finished. I have added some colored pencils so far and started to add some beadwork.