Red, Red, Robin Panel 8: Singin' a Song

Panel 8 is one of few words. I decided  'singin' a song' deserved its own panel. While the last panel  seeks to capture many of the activities I enjoyed as a child, I felt that singing deserved a panel of its own. My childhood was full of singing - both my parents sang as they went about their work, we sang around my grandparents' pianola, we sang at school and church. Even on those lunchtimes at Primary School when it rained and we were confined to eat in a classroom, we entertained ourselves by singing popular songs. My mother had two Hawaiian guitars she sometimes played and my father joined in with a paper and comb. This panel is a tribute to those times.

This is the panel on which I experimented with needle felting before I even began stitching the first panel! I happened to have some red roving, and couldn't resist temptation. So when I finally got to this panel, I thought I should keep going and needle-felt the whole bird. I'm not sure what this means for cleaning the quilt, but I figure I will  probably have it dry cleaned, so hopefully it will survive.

Of course, I had no black or white roving so set off to Spotlight and bought a bag of undyed roving in black and white and set about felting it into position.



It is a lot quicker than stitching!

The rest of the panel, however, made up for the time I saved. I began by adding a church choir.

and followed this up with a version of my high school choral group.

My mother would not be flattered by my version of her playing the guitar. My choice of variegated thread (to hand rather than carefully selected)along with my over-enthusiastic black French knots, has her resembling a clown.








The group around the pianola was a little more successful. I quilted the spaces in between with some musical notes.

I have continued to use the heavy stitching to quilt the borders and have stitched around the outside of the robin to create an outline on the back.

I really enjoyed stitching this one - it was a creative challenge and I'm pleased with the overall look.

I have been working on the last panel while I've been travelling in the UK. I hope to have it finished and the account posted before I leave for home next weekend.