Texture: realism in bird quilts at Aullwood

Tonight, I'm going to share some MORE quilts from the Aullwood Nature Center's "winged messengers" exhibition.

I thought these were particularly fun because of their excellent use of specialty threads which created realistic textures in the quilts.

Melani Kane Brewer from Cooper City, Florida did two of the pieces I'm showing tonight, and Merry Havens of Thornton, Colorado did the others.

Melani's Merlin the Great Horned Owl is an elaborate construction of hand knitted pieces, with strips of torn fabric embellished with eye-lash yarn to give the fluffiness necessary to the feathers, and thread painting. Because she prefers a natural look to her pieces and goes to lengths to recreate it, she calls herself "a naturalist in fiber.



In this detail shot, you can see how successful she is in accomplishing the feathers.










In her Morning Hunt in the Everglades you can see her triptych of the cypress trees in her back yard, with an egret coming for his breakfast.

Again, she used a variety of techniques in order to achieve the textures in nature. Couching, thread painting, applique...and more were put to use in this piece.




She particularly liked how she showed you only a part of the egret. I like the little water plants and the thread work around his beady eye!

Here's Melani's website for more looking!




http://melanibrewer.com









The next two pieces also use heavy threadwork and specialty threads, but they are by Merry Havens. This is her Great Spotted Woodpecker and below is her Quail. Like Melani, Merry also embellished, couched, appliqued and threadpainted. However, in her Quail, she also added beads.