Urban Jungle

This started with a piece of fabric I bought at Long Beach this year.  

it reminded of a city landscape, with the buildings all grey and windows

I have always loved this certain poem about cats

I read it in my first 'Big Book of Poetry' 

when I was 9

Good poetry stays with you and I knew that if I could just sketch some cat faces 

I could overlay some of the 'windows' with different colored tulle and it would give subtle shading. 

I simply hand wrote the verse & used a white gel pen for the highlights. 

I also wanted to do something relatively small and use a lot of hand embroidery that I was playing with. 

Here is the result. 

18" L x 16" W

The background fabric is everything you see minus the tulle rectangles, hand stitching, words & cat faces.  

Cool huh?  I thought so too, I bought two yards!   

I will bind it in black so it will have a nice black frame to bring the eye back in.

 This poem first appeared in 1916 written by Don Marquis

You can see the full poem here:

But truly I only ever remembered by heart this stanza

it echos to me Invictus with it's proud defiance

and firm resolve.

I enjoyed very much working on the embroidery, it's very relaxing.  

 I found some sketches of cats online and tried to imitate them.  After stitching the light green long vertical lines (single strand floss) over the tulle I realized it made it appear as rain.  I must remember that discovery.

 I am particularly drawn to this one, his mournful look.  The model I used wasn't quite this beat up looking, I had fun taking nips our of the ears and putting more lines in to make him appear dirty.

and French Knots.  My favorite, in any work. 

Let me know what you think?  

Thanks for looking.