Playing around with a patterned background

I have this little painting of a bird that I love and used it as inspiration for this rug.  The bird was very simple and all one color (orange) but the interesting thing about the painting is the background. It has a circular pattern in it and the more I looked at it the more I thought about using patterns in backgrounds for my rugs. Adding interest to the background with a pattern is a good way to make a "ho hum" rug special.

I chose the owl from my Sauder class to use as my main motif. The next step was to choose the background pattern. I'm fond of the chevron pattern so I used that as my background pattern. Now  let  me just say this was not the easiest of patterns I could have chosen.  It was a little tedious trying to get the points lined up but it was a small pattern so I plodded away.  I definitely am pleased with the way it turned out and will be using this idea in future rugs.

On a side note, see the breast of the owl? I used some wonderful yarn for it and I just love the texture it adds to the owl. 

As always, thanks for stopping by,  Maria