Historically lots of different techniques were used for creating these lions. The one designer Tricia Nguyen chose for this lion was a body of silk gimp in brown and tan lion-like colors, which is couched down with matching filament silk. An exciting aspect of the project was the opportunity to work with silk gimp. . . which was made for Tricia for this (and other) projects.
As usual, I got myself in trouble by making "just a few little changes" to the piece as originally envisioned. Here's the lovely lion Tricia stitched.
Well, I decided I wanted my lion to be a bit tawnier -- not so much dark brown. Not too hard to accomplish. But I went a little further. Using some historic pieces as models, I also (foolhardily?) decided to change the pattern of the couching. . ."just a little," of course. . . but it ended up requiring a fair amount of fiddling. But finally the body is finished! Ta dah!!
The next step will be to work on the face and mane. There are LOTS of options to consider here. . . so yes, it may all take quite a while. For inspiration, I have been browsing some photos of real live lions. . .as well as Margaret's completed lion (from the same class) plus all my photos of lions from last fall's needlework tour. Hopefully, the PERFECT approach will hit me soon.
In the meantime, how's this for inspiration? Isn't he splendid?
I think your tawny lion is looking very stately, and the inspiration lion is a real star!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're making some variations on the piece - it would be boring if everyone made them the same, and it sounds like you are putting a lot of work into making your's interesting.
ReplyDeleteI like your lion :-)
Thanks Ladies! I LOVE lions (cats of all types, don't you know) and am looking forward to doing his mane. . . as soon as I figure out WHAT I want to do.
ReplyDeleteThat's the fun part :-) :-)
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