Creating Chickens

To start creating chickens I first had to find my "Feather" fabric. This was challenging due to the fact that it was all mixed up with my landscape fabrics, trees, leafs, rock texture, tiger fur, coral reef fabrics, a huge collection of fabric I had collected to make my scenes from my photos. I started sorting into cardboard photo boxes from Michael's. Yea! they were on sale. I pulled out all the fur, tigers, zebra, leopard, snake skin textures and put them in a box and labeled it. I am very organized, most stuff is boxed and labeled, but it doesn't do you any good to make a box if you have no where to put it. My shelves are full, could it go back where the fabric was, of coarse not, that was overflowing. Next the feathers, not as much as I thought, and some of it was blue, orange and green, not really going to work, except maybe for a parrot. Scale is also important, most of it was too big to make my chickens.

I made two chickens, using textural fabrics, not much of the feather fabric. I think they will look great with stitching/thread painting. I am waiting on the others, until I decide what the background will be, that will influence the chickens, either I make them a dark value or a light value, so that they stand out and don't blend in.

Next is the search for chicken wire fabric, I just knew I had some. But this occasioned a sort through and clean up of the next area of my sewing room. A big stash of fabric with "objects" on it. Birds, Easter eggs, alligators, cats, John Deere tractors, marbles, dinosaurs, elk, salmon, butterflies and dragonflies, etc... etc... It went on and on, more sorting, more boxes, decisions to get rid of the stuff for children's quilts. Cut up the children's prints and use them for charity baby quits. I spent two days, cleaning and sorting fabric, but the chickens only took 2 hours to make. And I never did find any chicken wire fabric. So a trip to Joann's Fabrics, and the Quilt shop downtown, no luck, but I did get a white fabric with 1" hexagons on it. I can dye it or paint it, add fence posts, and when I stitch it, I can add a wire texture, so I am brain storming this option. I'm gonna brave the Christmas shoppers and go to WalMart tomorrow to get prescriptions, so I'll check there for the fabric too.