Surrounding the plane and OMG..it's 4 years

Well... first....Ray and I celebrated our 4th anniversary.... yeah..... complete with long stemmed roses.... I think I'll keep him! :-)

Now to keep flying for the Navy. Since I try to work inside to outside with heavy quilting as shown on this piece... I work around the fuselage enough to get to the circular yellow gold propellor trail.
Next a variegated yellow/pale coral thread for the propellor spin.
Looking okay.. Now to keep moving outward.

Like the plane.... Now to the sky...

So far... the plane is looking okay... though just may be a few tweaks at the end. Thats always he case with my work.. whether it be painting OR quilting.
'Am starting the darkest areas of sky background with a dark blue/medium blue twist. I tend to enjoy the irregular stitched look of a twist.... it's more like nature... tho I must admit from a judging perspective, a twist can sometimes read as inconsistent stitching... at least if your stitch length is shorter i.e. much like mine.

Laborious Quilter at large

I am 7 hours today into quilting background of the Corsair and my eyeballs are fried. So.. time to stop and wish you all a Happy Holiday. Hope you are BBQing or the like.

Connecting Threads...in Quilting

When I am quilting an image which will include varying thread colors adjacent to each other, I will if the quilting plan permits, try to interlock one thread color into the adjacent thread color. That means whichever thread is quilted in first must be done so as to leave room for the next thread's interlocking quilt line. Here's the near edge of the rounded plane fuselage. It is darker on the side of the plane that is away from the light source.... so I've saved room for a darker blue thread

The opening left in between the lighter blue thread permits the darker thread to interlock and thus provides a more gradual pleasing value transition.

Audition Thread and then lets go.

I generally lay out the threads I think I will be using... and think about them a day or so before i begin. I on average use about 80% of what I lay out, and thus 'am open to and often make changes as I go.
I said to myself... I wasn't going to quilt this so heavily... ( honestly because it's a donation) but I can't help myself.... I wanted the plane to appear cold and hard... very different from the boiling dark clouds. That said to me... parallel/ clean lines on the plane and noted much distance apart in quilt lines just wouldn't look like hard metal... so the journey began.

Little people are hard to paint

Well this was a challenge! I've never tried to paint a face portrait that was 3/4" in height. Hard to do on fabric! We do have a filled cockpit finally. Who is this navy pilot? It is would-be pilot Ryan Abbott of Fort Collins, Colorado. Not the best 3/4" likeness, but it is intended to honor the adventurous spirit of this remarkable young man. Yeah Ryan!!!

Almost there

This Corsair is almost painted tho I'm still considering how to finish off the edges.
You may have noticed the cockpit is empty. All along I had a plan on who would go in the cockpit..... but at this last minute... now that I could get at my iphoto gallery, I have changed my mind. I'll fill the cockpit soon and let you know who it is!