Zebra Inspiration

I am in the creating/planning phase of a design for a scarf that is going to be used as a raffle item. The proceeds will help pay for my little zebra friend Nemo. This little Zebra is living at Broken Road Ranch in Winchester where I board my horses. Deborah, the owner and manger of the ranch is Nemo’s new Mom. Deborah has a heart the size of Texas and wants to provide a special place that people can go to and interact with animals that they may never have had the opportunity to if not for her.

I think that is a wonderful idea and if you see one little kid feeding a Zebra named Nemo, I bet you would feel the same.

So why do I want to help Deborah pay for Nemo? Well besides the fact that I can see this as a magical thing for a child, I feel that it is the least I can do for this wonderful friend. Back in December, My beloved horse Moondance who is 30 years old, colic. She was sick and on the brink of death for 3 weeks. You would have thought that Moondance was Deborah’s horse.  We had to keep a 24 hour vigil for the first two weeks, it was cold and I was exhausted and emotionally spent.  Deb was there to relieve me so I could rest. She would feed her by hand, walk her through the night, blanket her when she was cold and loved on her when the pain was to much for her. I could not have done it by myself. Moondance made it through this ordeal and is now fat and sassy again. We have to have a special diet that Deb prepares for her each day.

So, the scarf…

I want to use parts of the design that God painted on Nemo. I found a overshot pattern that looks like shields  and feels some what Africa to me. I will use it for the Shibori part and I will paint the stripes on the fabric before I gather it much like I did with the goldfish scarf. Here are some of the pictures I took.

I love the pattern you see here that looks like a upside down Y.

 

 

Here is Nemo’s sweet little eye. I like the 4 lines above his eye and the two lines that run right under his eye.

This is his back legs. See how the lines seem to connect.

It is a little hard to see the line details on his forehead because he is fuzzy,  the lines form diamonds and the widest part of the diamond is his eyes.

 

His front legs sort of remind me of Birch tree’s . 

Next, I started looking for color inspiration. I decided to look at pictures of Africa . Here you see shades of orange, rust , yellow browns,and black.

 

This one has a rainbow of colors

 

Blues, purple, lavender, magenta

Yellow, pink, blue, and purple

 

Blues,orange, and gold

What colors do you think would look good in this design?  I'm using white 10/2 tencel and the stripes will be black.  I need help to pick the colors I use on the Shibori portion of the scarf.

Once I feel like I have captured the feeling and look that I want I will begin.

When I am finished we are going to sale raffle tickets for the scarf.

Do you remember The Mr. Ed Show???

In the beginning of the show while they sang the “A horse is a horse of course of course” song they showed pictures of Mr. Ed  looking out of his stall, well I snap this picture of Nemo the other day and it made me laugh and think back to my childhood.