Call this a win

Today is one of those rare June days that I can have the windows open. I love hearing the birds sing and call outside. There’s a red-headed woodpecker visiting our bird feeder. I can hear its distinct chatter. Somewhat migratory in it’s nature, the red-head seems to only visit us in the breeding season. I always look forward to seeing them. They are definitely hard to miss with their bright red head and black and white tuxedo-like body.

We have several varieties of woodpeckers who visit our yard. Another impressive species is the pileated woodpecker. Pileateds are large birds and amazing to watch. Last week we saw one feeding its young with suet from our feeder. It is so special when they play in our backyard.

Both of these birds are common in the longleaf pine forests in which I live. Like many habitats its being lost to encroachment of people. The pinecones of the longleaf are massive. I’ve been working on a concept using the longleaf pinecone as inspiration. This week I sketched out a digital drawing based on a photo I took a couple years ago. Now that I have the line drawing in Adobe Illustrator, I can easily resize the image to fit any project requirements.

I tried to send the line drawing to my Cameo Silhouette plotter. The Silhouette has a blade attachment which will follow the lines of a drawing and cut out pieces of fabric. (Here’s a link to a post where I describe how it works.) I’m not sure I’m sold on using the Silhouette. I can see it’s potential, but I also need a lot of practice trying to get the techniques down. The image in this post shows my results after I fused all the tiny bits together. I still need to fuse it to a background fabric, then add some depth and detail using thread and pencil. For the most part I’ve accomplished what I tried to do, so we can call this a win.