This is a photo of the tortoise I sent Linda B

I call him a ‘Knight In Shining Armour”. This came to mind as soon as I saw the photo. I also knew that I had both types of leather in my stash and just took it from there. The arms are of mesh ribbon which I randomly stitched over. I used an overdyed thread for the face. The “Knight” was stitched as a slip and attached to the background fabric. I bought this fabric while on vacation in the US. The green ‘trails’ on the fabric represent seaweed washed up from the ocean. I added a variegated wool ‘nest’ to represent a bunch of colourful washed up weeds. The butterfly and ladybug were added for fun. I had an absolutely great time working on this!

Joyce D

After I printed off the picture, I let everything percolate for a day or two or three…. Although the picture had a lot of browns in it, any time I visualized the piece it was in green and yellow. So my tortoise became green and yellow. I started by painting quilt batting with acrylic paints mixed with textile medium as per the instructions in the “Quilting Arts” magazine. I painted two pieces, each about 5 x 7 — one in greens and yellows and the other in reds and browns (for another project). I had orginally intended to only cut out the shell from the batting but as I started to piece it together the rest of the pieces wanted to be batting as well. I hand-stitched the pieces onto the background fabric (a piece I had that I though looked a lot like small pebbles on a path) using varigated brown #12 pearl cotton. The outside is a knotted cretan stitch or at least my version of it. The upper shell was all one piece with the segments outlined in the same brown but in stem stitch. I used a variated yellow #8 pearl cotton to create the lines on each segment. Once I had the eyes and mouth on the little fellow, I pinned him up to look him over and there was something missing. I needed more texture in the legs. Since I wanted it to be scale-like, I thought beads. I did the green and yellow beads first, thinking to highlight the scales. Then I hung it up again but it still wasn’t the tortoise I was envisioning. Back to the beads. I took flat red-brown and black beads and continued around the shiny scales. Now it was right. Then before I could do any more damage or embellishment, I stitched him down onto a piece of ivory cotton with a layer of thin batting in the middle and mailed him off to Sue.

Here is the photo of my interpretation of the tortoise. You didn’t expect to see an actual tortoise rendition from me did you?

I used the geometric units in the picture, the octagon and triangle shapes from the shell, on the ground fabric. The yellow circles are used in the embroidered portion. The embroidery is done on a piece of felted silk and wool rovings. The felting was done using the method for making silk paper. I used the colors that were in the photograph and did embroidery in silk, cotton and metal threads with beading throughout.

The embroidery was attached to a thin card with double stick tape. The back of the postcard is off white cotton fused to heavy weight pellon and applied with double stick tape to the back of the embroidery. The postcard was stamped and hand cancelled at the post office and will be mailed in a separate envelope.

Eleanor

Sometime during the first week in January, I discovered a blog – http://calendargirls2008.blogspot.com/ – and instantly fell in love with the concept. I mulled it over and decided to see if any of my friends thought it was a good idea. Not only did one of them think it was a great concept but she said, “If you go ahead, sign me up.” So with nothing ventured, nothing gained, I went ahead. I then emailed everyone in my address book that I thought might be even remotely interested and over the course of the next couple of weeks had 10 other artists ready to start. We began on January 25th with a picture of a tortoise. The picture was proof photo from an on-line stock photography company, so I won’t show it here. Everyone was then given the task of interpreting or being inspired by the image, creating a 4×6″ fibre postcard and popping it in the mail to their 1st swap partner.

The results have been fantastic. Here are the first few:

Linda’s Tortoise:

Linda's tortoise

I had to look at the picture for a while, but eventually I heard him shouting “blackwork” at me. I started looking at different blackwork patterns and tried to pick some for the tortoise’s shell, but I thought it would be more effective to use only one pattern for everything and just change the colours in the different areas. I looked at elaborate patterns, but since the colours were going to be the focal point of my tortoise, I decided on a simple pattern of hexagons and squares. I used backstitch to outline the colour changes as I wanted it to blend in with the blackwork and not stand out and detract from the design. I had always wanted to do a picture with an overall blackwork pattern and just change the colours, so I was really pleased with the way he turned out. I will definitely use this technique in the future.

This one is by Sue.

This one is by Sherry.

and she was so inspired she did another rendition just for herself

Gillian’s Tortoise

When I saw the photo that Sandra had sent, I was struck by the contrast of the hard, scaley tortoise and its soft colours and gentle curves. The colours and curves made me think of old paisley shawls, and this is the design I eventually stitched in crewel.

Joyce G’s tortoise:

Here’s my rendition. I keep wanting to call him McTavish. He is in canvaswork.

Kim’s tortoise

Carol’s tortoise:

Gloria’s tortoise all the way from Mexico

And so in the way of tortoises everywhere, we still have a few to come. Slowly but surely.