A present for a vet: The Big Cat Panel (part 1)

In the past couple of weeks I've mentioned that I'm working on a couple of commissions – one of these is for a woman whose son is a wildlife vet, and who wanted something appropriate to give him. After some enquiry I found that he particularly liked big animals, like lions and elephants

Now, I am second to none in my admiration of elephants, but from a design point of view they're a bit limited. You just draw a big elephant and that's about all you can do with them. But the big cats make up a very interesting group consisting of many beautiful and intriguing animals so I decided to try my hand at a Big Cat Panel. It's almost finished at the moment, and features a lion, a lioness, a cheetah, a leopard and of course the most spectacular of all, the tiger

The Leaping Tiger

Technically it wasn't difficult – just an appliqueed body lightly overstitched with the appropriate colours and then the stripes stitched on top. There's no satin stitch border to the applique, of course – after all, this is a real tiger and not a cartoon! He's a nice big size – ten inches from nose to tail tip – so he will make a good "header" for the panel. I'll post the other Cats in the next few weeks