I have been working on my piece in Photoshop and couldn’t figure out why it didn’t look right. Well, of course it was the eyes. I also changed the shading around the mouth. I think that the upward shadow is misleading. I had the same issue on my last portrait.
I have been working on a portrait recently but haven’t had the time or the energy to write about it in my blog, although I did try to keep track of what I was doing with pictures as I promised several people that I would document how I develop one of my portrait quilts.
I took a picture of a friend of mind recently and talked with her about what color she felt would personify her personality. Yellow. Can you make someone in yellow? But I wanted the piece to give the feeling of her and letting her choose the color seems important. If I made her in green — which is what I might have chosen — the essence of her might not come through in the final piece.
I use Procion MX fiber reactive dyes on cotton and chose a mixture of 7 parts bright yellow and 1 part golden yellow. The golden yellow was essential as it is more orange and helped me come up with a good color range. Value is the most important thing, and if the fabric doesn’t work, then it shows in the final piece. However, I was asking for a lot. I needed 7 good distinct values with white & black also added. I dyed 8 and was pleased with the results.
I took the picture of my friend and played with it in Photoshop, CorelDraw, and then on paper before I got a good pattern. I then printed it out, traced a copy with permanent pen onto vinyl, and then traced a copy in reverse for the fusing patterns.
There are many ways to approach construction. For the most part, I fuse onto white fabric (because it doesn’t create shading problems) using an overlay of vinyl with the pattern copied onto it for help in placement of pieces. Once I have the pattern on the vinyl, I baste it onto the white fabric and then pin the entire piece on my design wall. I pull back the vinyl as I go to fuse directly to the white fabric.
The large pieces define the face, but the interest and magic is in the details.
This is interesting — but the white background is distracting. I intended to have a black background, but I didn’t want to use that as my base fabric and cause shadowing problems behind the yellow. I don’t want to fuse all of that on either, so I decided to use reverse applique — but first, I need a line to follow on the back side.
Again, there are several ways to accomplish this, but I was limited to what I had in my studio. Using a water soluble pen, I outlined the head using the vinyl overlay as a guide. I then put gray thread in the bobbin & water soluble thread in the top and followed the line I had drawn on the top.
Then I laid black sateen fabric face down on my table and clipped it down so that it would be as flat as possible. Then I laid the portrait face down and pinned on both sides of the gray line. When I was done, I put black in the top & bobbin and sewed on the back following the gray line. Then I CAREFULLY cut away the black from the face.
And now I have a rough draft of what the piece will look like.
At this point I do a gut check and make changes. For example, the photograph has a small white speck on the neck that was distracting — I never added it. And I don’t like the small black pieces on the bottom left and middle top — although the piece where her hair changes direction seems fine. I will look at this for a few days before I start sewing the pieces down. Although it looks done, I add a zigzag around all of the pieces.
I usually use matching thread when I do machine applique — but I have a strange desire to use black or gray with this piece. I may play with it in Photoshop to see what that would look like.
I forgot to write about the book cover I finished recently. There was a great article in Quilting Arts magazine about making one, and I needed a small project and wanted to play with some new ideas. That is what started me tea & coffee dyeing.
I laid the strips of fabric into an overlapping grid onto fusible interfacing — and then fused it to stay together. I then stamped on the fabric with metallic paints, covered it with some strips of lace and a bronze polyester organza, and then quilted it with a bronze polyester thread.
Then I got out my embossing tool — which is really designed for scrapbookers but works great for melting manmade fibers like polyester — and proceeded to melt the organza. It doesn’t melt completely but draws up around the stitching.
I scorched it a little in the middle so I covered that area with lace and stitched it down. I love how the organza tightened up around the stitching but was less please with the crispy areas I got where the organza had been without stitching. Next time I will probably cut the organza from the blank areas first.
And thanks to permission from Pokey Bolton, editor of Quilting Arts, I can share the final book cover with you.
I added a lace edge, wrapped it around a book, and tied it with thick cotton drapery cord that I had covered with thread and ribbon. I then added beads and pearls.
Looks old, doesn’t it?
I haven’t written in while since I got the news that we will be moving. I have been in the same house for 10 years and have found that I have roots that are difficult to move. I was much more agile in my twenties and always moved at the drop of a hat. Even as a child, my parents moved me around at a fairly steady rate and we rarely stayed in a house five years. I suppose that as we grow older, we become more settled and resistant to change — which is an odd feeling for me since I have always considered myself akin to a chameleon.
I have been working on a Tshirt quilt. It is made from Tshirts and baby blankets from the daughter of a friend of mine. She died at the age of 6 about a year and a half ago, but we still think of her and miss her.
She had a lot of pink so I asked her mother if I could go with the pink and brown color scheme that is so popular now. Although I’ve never been a fan of brown, it has lately started to grow on me. I even painted my bedroom a cafe au lait color. I love the way that the chocolate sets off the pink in this quilt.
Now to figure out how to quilt it. It is very large — over a queen size but not quite a king — and was difficult to hang for a picture. I would throw it on my Hinterberg frame, but I had to take it down to declutter the house. I’ll have to think on this one.
I have also been working steadily on my next portrait quilt. I have had many requests to follow the creation of a portrait and will post progress soon.