Mama’s Clothes

I have a dream to finish cutting out all this entire piece before the Christmas break. It’s ambitious but I’m putting the pedal to the metal and seeing what I can get done in the time that I have.

I started this week with her shirt. It’s hard to see hear since it’s white.

Here I’ve completed her jacket and her shirt shows up better. She’s actually hanging on my design board — that’s why the background is black. When I take a picture of this piece on the ironing board, I can’t get high enough above it to take a pick that doesn’t have some distortion. You can see some of that in the pic above.

The only issue I have is that some of darker values of the shirt are blending into her skin. The two pieces under her hand I can easily swap into jacket fabric. The lower pieces on the left will probably become lighter values.

Although it looks red in this picture, the colors are an orange red — more rust colored. I wanted the mother to have a hot color — and then the children will have cool colors. A bright red would have been too cheery — the rust conveys a more worn feeling.

Then I started on the son leaning on her left shoulder. He is turned away from the viewer so you only see the back of his neck.

I did use the same fabrics that I used for the mother. When I made Beach Guardians, the two sisters have the same fabrics. I think it gives a feeling of relationship between the two — unlike the duet piece A Walk in Twilight when I used different fabrics for the two friends.

And this is his hair. I like that he’s more blond relative to the darkness of his mother. He is, however, tucking himself into her side & behind her so I will at some point have to add some darker tone to the crown of his head where his head leans into his mother’s hair.

I was free to make his jacket any color I chose — but really, the smart thing is to let the color wheel have a say in it. Since I chose an orange red for the mother, I chose a green for her son. On her other side, her daughter will have a blue — probably more on the gray side though.

And the baby in her lap — I just don’t know at this point. Today I’ve finished the daughter’s neck, fist, and arm — but her hair will take some time.