The Armadillo and the Cow-finished

 Earlier this week (here and here) I shared some in process pictures and the story behind my latest art quilt, The Armadillo and the Cow.  I'm back today to share pictures of the final piece.

The Armadillo and the Cow.  c. Shannon Conley, 2021, 35"h x 49"w, Photo Mike Cox

The edges are finished with couched bright pink chenille yarn, and I love the festive feel of the brightly colored trim.  All the pink trim and pink/black doilies came from my trim and lace collection.  The little bright pink bits along the top were remnants from the vintage doilies I used to cover the head and legs.  The green trim is some that was in my stash from Georgia (thanks Georgia!) which I think she dyed a long time ago.  

The rubber stoppers were sewn on with sparkly Ricky Tims Razzle Dazzle thread, so you can see them sparkle if you look from the side.  The quilting was tricky since you only get one shot when quilting through thick paper, but the rainbow thread really makes me smile.

His head is mounted on a wire, so while not really a true bobble head, it does bounce if you bop him on the nose.  I adjusted his eye a little to make it look like he's glaring a bit suspiciously at the cow.  Like he can't quite tell whether she is having more fun than he is.

When you look at the side view you can see the dimension a little more.  The armadillo body is held on with magnets so it can easily be removed if I need to work on the background.  It protrudes about 4-5 inches from the background.  The cow is mounted on springs about 1.5" from the background, so she boings nicely if you tickle her.

I love how this turned out.  I'm still working on a hidden frame for it (mounted to the back to provide support), but it just makes me happy to see it on my design wall.  I'm still trying to think of a name for the armadillo and the cow, so feel free to leave any suggestions in the comment box!

The Cow part of the Armadillo and the Cow

 I blogged earlier this week about my rainbow armadillo, and I'm back today to share about the next phase of this project.  The rainbow armadillo would be lonely without his cow friend.  But of course she was always going to be smaller than him.  Poor cow friend!

To give her a little depth I made her out of two layers of fabric covered EVA foam and then hand stitched on more vintage painted doily.  She was supposed to look like just a black and white cow, but the laciness of the doily makes it feel like she's wearing jelly shoes and a black veil over her face.  I think she must be a very fashionable cow?  Her tail is made from some small bits of alpaca yarn which somehow seemed fitting.  It's a bit hard to see in the pictures, but she has a cute dimensional ear, a horn made out of a pretty black glass bead, and a beaded eye.  Sweet cow!

Both the cow and the armadillo needed a background to live on, and early on in the process I decided to use recycled light and electron microscopy images for the background.  I'm not sure why, but sometimes you get an idea and just have to run with it.

The images are old printouts from the days before we had good digital cameras, so they're on stiff shiny photopaper.  The ones on the bottom are light micrographs of the mouse retina.  Some are from blind mice and some from normal mice.  The ones in the top half are electron micrographs with labeling for specific retinal proteins.  I have folders and folders of them from old lab studies.  I think they're super cool, but we don't have any use for them at work anymore (and I have digital scans of them anyway).  The background is black felt with a layer of peltex in the middle.  It was pretty stiff to quilt (between the peltex and the thick photopaper) but I knew I'd need a stiff background since the armadillo and cow would be protruding forward off the front.  Even with the stiff background, the whole final quilt is going to have to mount to a backing board I think.

As I started mocking things up on the wall, it became evident that even with the rainbow explosion of armadillo, the whole thing was way too black and white.  I started brainstorming ways to add more color and contrast. I settled on three approaches.  First, I dug out some more vintage doilies and trims I painted, you can see the results of that effort in the final post.  Second, I decided to cut away the pictures from around the armadillo and cow so there would be black around each one to give your eye  a little place to rest.  Finally, I decided to stitch on a brightly colored border made out of rubber stoppers.  We recently moved labs and I discovered a drawer full of hundreds of black rubber stoppers, more than our lab could use in three lifetimes.  Inspired by my friend Susan Lenz who has a fantastic series of mandalas featuring stitched found objects, I thought why not sew on the stoppers.  Conveniently, I had a whole bunch that already had two holes in them, so I brought them home and painted them!

This project involved a lot of pinning up and taking down and seeing how things looked.  My studio was an absolute explosion of disaster during this project.  Little bits and bobs and pieces of stuff and paint were everywhere, but it was so fun to work on.  Come back later this week to see the final quilt!

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!