Fox Swap

I entered an Animal Spirit Guide swap, and the partner I drew offered two to chose from. It seemed her primary Spirit is the Gray Fox. Red Fox are so much more common and most of the illustrations are for that aspect. When I asked what she had, what she wanted and what she did not want, I learned a great deal and decided that if I was to work with this animal, I needed to bring in who I am and what I do.

I've had a red fox pattern for a small quilt for some time and converted it to a black and white copy so I could make it a gray fox. The red fox has black boots and a white tipped tail where the gray fox is made up of grays, light browns and a bit of red. It is a scrappy pattern, however, I don't have gray tone-on-tone fabric so thought about going to the store and buying some batik. Hmmm.

Then I continued my research, and found ancient images for the Fox constellation, historical references, and kept looking. I found tarot imagery of a GRAY fox, and books, a coloring page, and even a movie. All these topics: Astrology, Tarot, history, books and most recently coloring pages are of interest to me.

However, making the quilt was going to be challenging even though the instructions said it was Easy. It was made for a RED fox, so I needed to re-write the pattern and make those dreaded HST that I wanted to be done with. I kept looking, and did a search for embroidery patterns and found several.

I've copied this one and plan to make it into a mug rug. And yes, it is an artistic copy, but it is the best I can do because I am not enough of an artist to create this or anything like it. I found a scrap of white denim that fits perfectly and will put a hoop over it and start on it for this weekend. She lists a few teas she likes, so I will try to find them to send along. I have a feeling this will turn out to be a nice mug rug and working with the denim will make it stand up to a lot more use than if it had been on muslin. And making it means I can shop from my closet, which also meets a goal of mine for 2016.