I took a portrait class with Marilyn Belford, and decided to do a portrait quilt of Colin who died in early January after many health problems.
Here's the link to the picture of the finished quilt:
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size idea, plus Sassy) What I ended up doing for the eyes was needlepainting them. I drew the outline on water-soluble stabilizer, hooped it tightly with two layers, dropped the feed dogs and went at it. I used about 4 or 5 different threads including a teal metallic at the last. If I were to do it again, I'd draw it a touch over the size needed, as you can see a band of the green I used behind and around the edges.
I may play with the thread painting a bit more and try another cat portrait entirely out of thread in this way, just to get the hair textures and shading just so.
I think it came out very nicely.
-georg