Faux-Embroidery, or Life Is Short

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, I've been trying to explain pen embroidery in an email, much easier to put some images up! These are a couple of chickens from my Maggie Walker Country Garden quilt. The quilt was such an odd size I choose to finish the blocks individually, each with a different quilting method. I think they look gorgeous this way.
This is a set I tacked together and embellished with western belt buckles, the type that were used on little boys belts back in the day. The Hamburg was hand quilted, the Polish was tied with size 8 DMC floss.

The Japanese Grey Bantam was bound with red and white chicken fabric from a friend in Austria, so I machine tacked with Mettler red machine embroidery thread. I think it came out great and I'd be perfectly happy with a quilt done like this.

Anyway, the point of my post was to show the pen work I did for the breed names. I taped the pattern on my light table, and then traced the lettering with Pigma Pens. For a project like the pen work appliqué embellishment on Little Brown Bird, I used a ultra fine sandpaper under the block so it wouldn't slip and just had at it. Some of the other blocks are shown in this post last spring.

Friday Thankies
It's Friday!
Multiple signs of spring, it really is here!
Fresh oranges and apples year around!