Virginia Greaves

Now that I have it constructed & de-constructed, what more could there be? Well, it occurred to me that it might be cool to add a drop shadow to the pieces — to give the illusion of the plate pieces on the surface of the table. I really had no idea how to do that. It’s easy in Photoshop — well, in the latest version it’s in a new place, but it’s just a few clicks away once you know where it is. And in Photoshop, it is a fairly subtle illusion — I’m limited by the solidity of fabric to create my illusion — which is more solid than scattered pixels.

It occurred to me that I could take a small lamp (I used a rabbit lamp from one of the kid’s rooms) and lift each piece to see where the shadows would fall.

Then I marked each piece with a blue line on the sides where I wanted to add a shadow.

Then I carefully lifted the paper backing from each piece — and used that as the template for another fusible template for only the lines I wanted to shadow. It didn’t need to be exact — this is about creating suggestion — and I only needed 1/4″ or so to tuck under the larger pieces.

Here you can see all of the pieces with their shadows — except it is on a flat surface & a little hard to see at this angle. If I were taller or my table were shorter, it might have worked, but I wanted to have a better angle for judging where all of the pieces would ultimately sit on the background. I took masking tape & lightly taped the pieces to the background — transferred the whole thing to my design wall — and then replaced the tape with less obtrusive pins.

This next part is more maddening than I expected. There are a lot of different looks you can get depending on the space between the pieces — and all of the pieces are interdependent so if you move one, you have to move several. At one point, I put them all tightly together so that I could regain the relationship between the pieces because I don’t want to entirely lose that when I pull them apart.

In this incarnation, I pulled the head pieces a little more askew & out. Unfortunately, because I used a variant of white in the circle portion of the portrait, it created a piece that then pointed outside of the piece — which is not the direction I want the eyes of the viewer to go.

I think that this is what I’m going to stay with. It shows all of the pieces still in relation to each other without any one piece wandering off, and yet the pieces are still distinct and apart from each other.

I like the effect of the drop shadow. It isn’t overly obvious that it is there, but it creates a depth in the piece that wasn’t there before.

My latest face is rather small — but my intention when it’s done is to cut it up. I know I know — but it’s time to do something unexpected.

To start, the face is made the same way. This pic shows the first 2 layers. Since I’m ultimately going to make an applique out of the entire thing, I’m much more careful with my layers so that I have as few of them as possible. I put down the 1st value — and then the 2nd value with cutouts for reverse appliqueing the 1st values.

I thought I would show what the cutting out looks like. This is the back of the 3rd value with some large areas still left to be cut out.

This is it cut out entirely. The 3rd value in the face tends to be the most complex.

I thought that I would mention that you can really screw up these complex shapes. If you draw a deep curve onto the paper backed fusible, cut it close to the lines, then fuse it, cut it out & try to apply it — it can get really wonky. Sinewy lines won’t lay flat when you fuse them & thus when you try to lay out the fabric, it won’t lay straight on your design. So there are times that it is best to leave big empty spaces in the fusible. You don’t want to fuse them down — that would be wasting fabric — but you can fuse down the lines you do want & use the big spaces to help you lay your design flat while you are fusing. Then you cut away the excess fusible.

These are the 4th & 5th layers.

And now the eyes.

Then I added the mouth & started on the hair. There are only a few pieces of the 1st layer of hair — so this pic shows the first 2 layers.

Most of the hair is made up in the 3rd & 4th layers.

And then I finished the piece with a background. I wanted something circular in a fabric that wouldn’t distract from the hues in the skin but that would work well with the background blues I’m going to add. Since I’m going with the idea of a plate, it made sense to go with a stoney white. It doesn’t compete with the yellows in the face or make it seem that the face is bleeding into the background. It will give a good contrast to the blue but not draw too much attention.

And now comes the scary part. I draw my circle onto Wonder Under and using my pattern, draw out the outline of the front of the face, the two eyes, and the mouth. I try to place the Wonder Under approximately on top of the corresponding elements. I prefer not to cut through the eyes and the mouth.

Now, how do I draw the lines to make it looked cracked? Hmmm — well in Photoshop, it’s fairly easy to use the magnetic lasso tool so I can estimate what it is going to look like — but I have to take a leap of faith & a pencil & draw my cracks onto the Wonder Under. When I’m happy with it, I draw over all of the lines to cut in red to make sure I don’t try to cut one of the guide lines I drew earlier.

This is what the front looks like with my neat circle cut out.

I then turned it over and (gulp) started cutting. It helped that I couldn’t see it as I did it. (I did in fact cover this piece as I worked on it for fear that someone in my house would grow attached to it before I cut it up & give me grief for sacrificing it.)

It was then that I started thinking about turning it over. You can see that it is sitting on the background blue fabric that I picked out — but you can’t just turn each piece over. It is a mirror image — so things on the right have to be moved to the left. I started worrying about putting it back together again — so I numbered the pieces on the back with hints to the pieces that bordered each other.

Then I stacked them all up by number, turned them over, and laid them back down as close as I could to make the puzzle pieces match.

And then I pulled the pieces apart so you could really see the cracks.

I spent today adding a drop shadow to the pieces in a dark blue so that they look dimensional. I’ll show that later. I got it all up on my design wall and I’m second guessing the placement of the pieces before I fuse it all down. (I fused the drop shadows on a teflon sheet so that I could attach them to their pieces but keep them loose. This way I can play with them on the design wall.)

Part of me wants to start sewing immediately, but some perspective might help the overall design. There may be another way of presenting this other than what I’ve all ready considered.

I confess — I haven’t written in quite a while — for many reasons. I stopped most all studio work after Thanksgiving in order to prepare for Christmas. It felt good to have all of my things done & properly prepared — but I also really missed the studio. I thought about my sketch book — even carried it around — but didn’t really work in it. I’ve also been letting Facebook take more of my life than I should. I think in the new year I’m going to limit my access.

I did make a small piece for my husband as a gift — it’s made from a picture of his dog Solomon. I made one of Solomon last year and gave it away in my fiber art group’s annual 5×7 exchange — and I didn’t realize how much that bothered him until it was all ready done. So this year I tried to make it up to him by making this small piece (Solomon II):

Not easy finding commercial fabrics in rust but I think I did an OK job. I even used a print with paw prints on it — which I think works out OK given Solomon’s age. He is a Brittany Spaniel & his life expectancy was 10 — he is 19 and still going strong.

I also had the complication of a new computer — on a new platform. We had an XP PC that was over 7 years old & it was making noises like the hard drive could crash any minute. We looked at new computers — and in the end bought an iMac which is SO much faster. There are new things to learn though — and the files aren’t as compatible as I would like. Microsoft Office files ARE compatible with the Mac — but hey, not all Microsoft WORKS files are compatible. Add in the fact that the CD writer on the old PC doesn’t always work. I finally brought over all of my old pictures using an external hard drive. I also set up a wireless network. I had tried for a VERY long time to do that with a DLink router — and it never worked — but the Airport  Time Capsule  set up like a dream & works with Macs & PCs.

My last technical struggle involves software. I use Photoshop A LOT — and CorelDraw to resize my patterns — and DreamWeaver for my website. I did upgrade Photoshop on the Mac — haven’t decided yet about DreamWeaver. I’m thinking about putting my entire website in WordPress. It’s been years since I’ve changed the look of it — may be time for a change — and WP is great software.

Once I got Photoshop on my Mac — and my pictures — I could start figuring out a new piece. Hmmm — not much to work with. I really need to dedicate myself to taking more pictures and maybe taking a photography class.

I have had an idea pinging around in my brain for a while. It involves doing a portrait — and then cutting it up to make it look like a cracked plate. Can I do that? Can I cut up a portrait? After thinking about who would be cracked — I decided that the answer could only be me. Although we always talk about how crazy other people are, everything is relative to ourselves — and you can’t deny that it’s possible that everyone else is sane & I’m the one that’s cracked.

I think that I just need to move away from my comfort zone of a straight forward portrait. Test some boundaries. Something maybe realistic with the unexpected thrown in.