Bastet 💚🐾🐾

All of us who know and love Cheryl Sleboda were saddened by the news of her goodbye to Bastet, the “Dutchess of Mean.” I wish I had met Bastet before she left for the Rainbow Bridge because photos certainly suggest a kitty with an awesome amount of cattitude!

As always, these pieces begin with a great photo:

First decision, the background. I wanted one which would not distract from the beautiful face…and included something to stand in for her favorite quilt, on which she sits in the photo. I turned to Janine’s Uppercase Volume 2 collection…and asked her which quilty fabric she thought would be best (there are a few color ways). So far, so good…

Now for my somewhat challenging subject. I had many terrific pre-MistyFused scraps of Carol Eaton’s hand-dyed fabrics, but Bastet had SO many colors running through her fur. Hmm. Better to sketch/ink the entire image into a piece of white Radiance and then let the threads do the work.

Ready for (lots of) stitching! While I am most certainly an Aurifil gal, here I turned to my trove of Superior Threads’ glossy polyesters…Magnifico and Twist…to try and capture some of the subtle shading of the fur (and that inimitable “go ahead, make my day” expression ;)!).

Of course the background ripples like crazy once the center subject is quilted! For the background, my black Aurifil stitched lots of lines around the dots…sort of a slalom pattern ⛷:

I loved creating this tribute to a special girl!