The Cat Smith, nearly but not quite there

So, where had I got to?

The first layers are in place, the underlayer of the tail included, so we have a genuine sense of the whole cat, sitting gazing seriously out at us. But you can see through the cat to the fabric beneath, and the board behind that, and I would rather the cat were solid, and properly marked.

More to do!

So the first thing to do was to thicken and extend Smith’s bib, place the mitten on his paw, and start adding more tangled layers of stitching to his fur.

So you can see that the fur is thicker now. I’m not entirely happy with the point of the bib as yet, but I felt when I’d got to this stage that the next stage should be to put in more of the dark markings, hoping that that would help the other elements of the fur to settle into place.

And I think it really has. The darker markings on fur and tail, the shadow between the two front legs and the shadow beneath the paws, all are helping to create a nice, solid, furry cat.

There are a few tweaks, I think, that need to be done, specifically something around the haunch and the tail, but I’m not quite sure what they are, so I need to settle down and stare at my source photo for long enough to load it into my head and find the last few stitches.

As I think about all this, I realise that, although this is very much a continuation of my usual practice of diving in and getting there eventually, the thing about the Animal Vignettes is that unpicking isn’t really possible, since the stitching is (deliberately) so tangled.

So until I get the necessary quiet to sit and stare, Smith is Nearly Finished.