New Quilt- The Armadillo and the Cow

 When SAQA put out a call for entry called "Fur, Fangs, Feathers, and Fins" I knew I'd have to make an armadillo quilt.  I love armadillos, but my family still tease me about them.  We didn't have armadillos where I grew up, and the first one I saw in real life was driving back from my sister's college graduation.  I lived in Arizona at the time where I was going to grad school, but my sister had been going to college in Texas where armadillos are native.  We passed a dead one on the side of the road, and I made a comment about the poor dead baby armadillo.  My sister told me it was a normal adult armadillo and I haughtily told her that no, armadillos were about the size of cows.  I was very very sure and everyone was completely making fun of me.  Of course now I live in Oklahoma where there are armadillos all over the place, but I've always thought they were cool (if smaller than I once envisioned).

The first armadillo and cow quilt was made for me by my mom. I had a fun cow t-shirt when I was a teenager, and when it got too worn to wear she made a super cute mini-quilt for me out of it, making sure to stitch on a few little armadillo buttons.

I decided my armadillo would be large and rainbow, and started brainstorming about how to make him.  I decided to use plastic milk jugs and cherry tomato containers for the scales, so I started cutting things up and spray painting them.  I wound up making two batches of each size- I feel like this sort of thing always takes more pieces than you think.

The papers where I painted them were almost as pretty as the scales!

After I painted them, I started stitching them down to stuffed forms I made (for the head and tail) or to fabric-covered EVA foam body pieces.

Before stitching scales on the top, the head was covered in pieces of vintage doilies I'd painted pink.  I really enjoyed using a lot of recycled/reused materials in this project.  I'm not sure where all the vintage doilies came from, though I know some have been given to me by friends over the years, but I love the lacy vibe and texture they give.

Here's the overspray paper from painting some of the doilies.  I have to figure out something to do with these.

I really enjoyed all the hand stitching in this project.

I was so excited about how even this much looked, but he did look kind of funny without any ears or feet.

The feet are made to match the head (they subsequently had scale bits stitchedon) and I made claws out of gold and purple sparkle fimo clay.

Here he is with all his parts pinned to my design board.  The ears help a lot (!)

Come back later this week for more armadillo quilt goodness!