Blue tit wall hanging

This is where my wall hanging started off this evening. I needed to do some more work on it before going back to see sue tomorrow. I’m not sure why i hadn’t  worked on it earlier this week, maybe just because it was a really tiring week in work and i had no energy when i got home. But today, after a relaxing time in a spa this morning i was ready to add finishing touches to my picture, with classic fm as my background music. 

I started by filling in gaps with ivy branches. Initially i was frustrated because i was needle felting them  on to the background and they didn’t look right when i just used the needle down the edges, but then i tried needling down the middle as well and was happier with the overall effect as it looked more textured. 

I’m not sure why i was so focused on this given that  loads of it was going to get covered with leaves, but i guess it was good to work on a non prominent part of the picture first. I was pleased when i got the ivy branches on  the wall to stand  out a bit more by needling more down the edges, and i did the same for the bricks to pull them out from the mortar effect behind. I also cut into the milk bottle lid so it would look like the bird had broken through. 

Then i spent quite a while looking for the nicest parts of my green felt and cutting out more ivy leaves and trying to add these in a non uniform way. 

Again i experimented with different ways of needle felting them on, keeping some  flat, and bulging others out, and leaving some parts of the leaves free from the backing felt, though i thought these looked a bit too artificial and tended to catch most of them in with the needle. After adding veins to some of  the other leaves, and breaking all but three of the needles sue had given me i decided i’d better bite the bullet and actually work on the blue tit. 

I kept referring back to the photo i was using and adding extra bits of colour and detail (though now i realise i ended up using two different photos from this page!). I’m so glad it’s possible to pull felt off if you’re not happy with it…. I did that a few times! It was fun trying to make fluffy bits round his tail and legs. I wasn’t sure about the fact that the more i needle felted on  his face  the more it seemed to flatten, but when i step back from it and look at it as a whole i think it still works. 

Finally i decided i needed to leave well alone and stop fiddling with adding more. So after just over two hours this evening my wall hanging has progressed from this 

To this 

I love how even though the blue tit is a really small part of the picture he really stands our because of his colours and where he is in the picture. He’s not lost amongst the leaves. 

We’ll see what advice Sue  has on finishing it all off tomorrow. 

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