Tribute to Bubba

I have a quilter animal lover friend on twitter that has a beautiful senior golden retriever that has some health issues. The last photo she posted of him on twitter just had me melting, he is one of those dogs you just want to go up to and hug. I was compelled to try to make an art quilt - I won't say of him because when you see the photo, my quilt isn't all that much like the photo as he is more reddish in life but will say mu quilt is inspired by Bubba "the golden one".

 

The golden one

This is Bubba - he is beloved by his family so gets lots of hugs

To make my version of Bubba, I printed out his photo, then traced the his basic lines on the photo with a thick black sharpie. This goes thru the paper to the other side, so I can see it better being black on white. I should have a photo of this part but wasn't thinking about describing it, just doing it:-) I then took a white cotton and traced those lines onto it with pencil. Doing it this way gives you a mirror image though, which you could trace again to get back to the original if you really wanted to.

 

 

So then after pinning the cotton down on some foam, I lightly sprayed with water and used acrylic paints mixed with clear hair gel as a medium. Yes, clear hair gel - or you can use Aloa sunburn gel. This makes the acrylic easier to work with and blend on the fabric.

 

Adding the ever so important little bit of white on the eyes.

 

I ironed alittle bit of fusible just around the edges, cut bubba out and found a background I liked. Back and batt, then quilted.

 

And quilted some more :-)

 

But really, how could you go wrong with a face like that!