The Reveal: Freckled Frog

Good morning my friends. It's time to reveal my quilt for the "Patterns in Nature" prompt. My quilt was inspired by the Northern Leopard Frogs we encountered while hiking in Fort Ransom State Park in North Dakota. This is my original photograph. You can see more pictures from our hike at that link I've given you.

Initially, I didn't see how I was going to recreate him with the fabrics I had available. Then, I came across a swatch of this McKenna Ryan fabric in my stash. Doing a quick internet search, I was able to find more of it. Yahoo! It was just what I needed to create frog skin. 

So I went to work rendering my photograph into fabric.

These are time-consuming, and they can be frustrating. This one actually went together more easily than anticipated.

Hour by hour...a little more.

Until the whole frog was constructed. I added the chalk lines on the legs so I’d know where to focus my stitching to bring out the detail.

Then, I created a background for it. This would have been a good fabric for the recent "Sky Color" challenge.

From there, I peeled him up off the teflon pressing sheet and fused him to the background.

Then it was ready for quilting and binding. These are the thread colors I used.

I wanted to quilt a dragonfly above his head, and I wanted it to have sparkly wings.

First, I went to work thread-painting and stitching down the edges of the frog.

That was done just through the quilt batting and prior to adding the back.

When it was finished, it looked like this:

Searching through my stash, I didn't have a fabric I liked for the back. I went searching online and found the perfect back for the frog. The rest of the quilting was done after the back was added.

And then I went to work quilting a place for the frog to live...and some friends to have over for dinner.

This is my rendering of a dragonfly.

Also, he wanted some lilypads and cattails in his pond.

On both sides, if you don't mind.

When the quilting was finished, I found this binding in my leftover binding scrap bag.

The quilt was actually all finished and hanging on the wall. Every time I entered the sewing room, I felt as if it needed something else on the right side. And so I carefully fused this rising sun (or setting sun...not really sure), and quilted in a few rays.

And then I could call it finished. 

I hope you like my quilt. It finishes up at 17 x 22 inches. To see more quilts created for the "Patterns in Nature" prompt, head on over to The Endeavourers blog.