The making of rainbow zebra....

I have been wondering why I am taking about 14 - 18 hours over my bee blocks....

I think I have found the answer...

Firstly I think a lot about it and then reject gazillions options... (This time is not included in the above estimation btw...). Then I start the design process..

I am not so good drawing from memory, so I look for pictures I can use.


I found a zebra I liked and traced it off the laptop, then put a grid around it.


and enlarged the zebra.

With some tracing paper I traced the outlines so I can overlay later, and coloured the outline of the zebra itself in transfer pen to be able to cut out the (light blue) basic zebra shape from the fabric.

I made little pattern pieces of each and every stripe (there are still four waiting to be converted into fabric on the right hand side on the back leg) and used bondaweb (after reversing the stripes of course) ironed to the back so I could iron them all on securely after being happy with the result. (I did some of the stripes more than once when I was not happy with the colours together).
Overlaying my traced copy to check the position of all the pattern bits.

All bits loose in their proper places...
and ironed on securely.

The outline embroidery being done,

and here the finished article, after machine securing each and every little stripe.

I think I can see why these things take me so long ! Dallas' house took me 14 hours too.. Similar sort of thing.. I first drew the house, then simplified it, then angled everything into something manageable for patchwork and made all the little templates for each piece. Some of those windows were so small that I could not possibly do this by machine, so whereas the zebra was part hand, part machine, the house was entirely by hand.

Marysia, whose son Wojtek this was for, wrote the following in flickr;

"Wojtek loves it! He is sitting next to me and screaming from happiness! Awesome!"

All I can say is that it made me very happy he likes it and I was able to create it for him!