Scared!

I have to tell you, I was so scared to start quilting the big deer. I was having a hard time trying to decide what was the best way to tackle it, so I put it off as long as I could. The issue I struggled with was trying to figure out the best way to do make him look kind of furry and not obscure the painted hairs. In the paintings, the deer appear very shaggy, so I stitched around the painted hairs using the direction of the strokes as my guide for the quilting.

I used two different brown Superior Bottom Line threads, a light brown for the cheek, chest and belly and dark brown for the rest. Bottom line is very thin, I used this specifically because I wanted the quilted texture, but I did not want the thread itself to stand out too much. I used a basic stipple quilting stitch on his antlers to make them appear more like they have a short velvety texture.