Another Portrait Quilt

This is the inspiration paper collage for the next quilt.  I rarely make quilts that have a face that is not directly looking out because it is much trickier to get the features where they belong.  But this face made me want to try.

I'm going to post the finished quilt below and then unfold the story of how she grew....

Here she is.  I wanted you to be able to see the difference between the inspiration piece and the finished quilt.  Definite proof that the characters in a quilt take on their own personality and decide WHO to be.  The character in the quilt is definitely older and maybe even a bit tougher than I thought she would be.  I like her but she was a bit of a surprise.

Now for the path she traveled.....

This is the paper pattern that I draw.  It has to be opposite of the real face because I use fusible web on the back of the fabric and then flip it over.  It is the size of the finished face.  I have a wonderful computer program that takes my drawing or tracing of the original and makes it any size that I need.  Lucky me to have that program.

These are the original fabrics that I selected - not all of them made the final quilt.  And that is not unusual.  You can't really tell how the fabrics will play together until they are in place.

Every quilt goes thru an UGLY stage.  This is my lady in one of the early stages.  

I made the entire face a single piece of fabric to see if I could use paint to add the features - like the nose.But the hair looks pretty good.  Notice the color of the eyes. It seemed like a good idea for a while - but they change color later.

She looks a little better on the background fabric.  I do like the center background being black because it adds depth to the final piece.  

 And now she has a dress!  I got this fabric years ago at a rummage sale and have always liked the crazy combination of colors.

So I added paint.  For shadows and for highlights.  To make the face look rounder - less flat.  

Even the lips have dimension.  But the eyes still look "buggy".  And she need an eyebrow over her left eye.

And the designs around her eyes needs more oomph.... more color and definition.

But she is getting a personality....

Note the changes to the fabric surrounding the eyes - it makes a definite difference.

And all of this happens before she is quilted.  So a lot of the dimension to her face is not yet there.  

But the photo below is the final quilt.  Notice the eye color.  And the addition of lighter fabric to the area around her eyes.  And the new eyebrow peeking out. 

She has become who she was determined to be.  How lucky am I that get to play with fabric and find these people.

 Some New Silly and Sweet Collages

This one is called Balance.  I have been looking for a reason to use this sassy lady in a collage and finally found the right phrase for her.

And I do think that we all have a balance of days - an important concept to embrace if we are to be happy!

And this one just plain makes me smile.  I think that if people could see the "real me" some days - she would look rather like this person.  And I would probably have a pet owl just like this one as a companion.  

One of the things that I focused on with this collage was balancing the color.  It started with a lot of black and white but adding touches of red made it feel complete.

 

Are you surprised by the change of figure in this one?  She is such a gentle and lovely little person.  I felt like she needed to express what we ALL need to know in our hearts - that we ARE perfect just the way we are.

What a calm and peaceful thought.

 

 

 

 

 Back to my wild and crazy critters with this one!

Not as peaceful as the previous one but a great sentiment:

If you are going to be weird, be confident about it.  

and.... My inner voice says I am extraordinary!

These collage are fun to make and at the store they are popular and make people smile.  I have several boxes of paper bits and collage fodder to choose from as I make each one and I am never sure where the focus character will lead me color-wise or sentiment-wise.  So it is an adventure for me every time.

 Watch How a Quilt Grows from an Idea to a Real Quilt

This quilt was inspired by a collage that I made recently.  The design of the collage was different than the others because it was not a character surrounded by a patterned border.  She was just THERE.  And I kept thinking about her.  She really wanted to be a quilt.  And now she is.

 

 

The collage that inspired the quilt 

And here are photos of the various stages of the quilt.... 

This is the background.  I really liked the way that the previous quilt of the Guy had a background with a black center and a colorful border that the central design overlapped.  So I decided to try that again.

The first thing I do is find fabrics for the main design and fuse them together to see if the fabrics play together nicely.  She looks peculiar because her eyes are blank.  But they get better later in the process.  The color of her lips also changes in the final design.

Here she is on the background.  She still needs more hair and some flowery decoration in her hair.

She is not yet fused to the background.  So I can make any changes that are needed easily.  You can see a glob of the fabric that I want to use for her flowers sort of laying there to check the colors and see if they work.

Yes.  I cut bits from the feathery fabric and put them together to look sort of flowery.  And she is not fused.  

No nose yet and no eyeballs.  But they are coming soon.

I do like the way she sort of grows across the black and orange background.  The black adds depth to the design.

Ah.  Here we go.  She has tiny eyeballs now.  It helps.  But there is much work to do.  All of the sewing down the edges of every piece of fabric and then the layering and quilting.  And THEN the painting that will add depth and - a nose!

And here she is.  Now she has a nose and the right color for her lips and stitching lines defining her chin and other features.  The quilting is finished and it was really fun to add quilting in the proper direction to follow the directional lines of her hair.  The next photo is a closer look at her eyes.  

The final stages certainly make a difference - and add depth.  

I add a lot of paint during the final stages of quilting - when it is a face.  It really made the eyes come alive.  Did I mention that originally the frames of the glasses were purple?  Changing them to orange really brings the attention to the eyes.

Do you think she looks curious and maybe a slight bit mischievous? 

Hurrah!  I am starting to Create again!!

I think that the hot weather somehow distracted me.  And then I started to reorganize the large closet in my studio.  AND I keep finding things that I had forgotten even lived in that closet!  Things like soy silk and silk cocoons and ..... five little dolls that I started years ago but never finished. They are only 8 inches tall and they are stuffed with fiber.  They each have a little hanging loop on the back so they can perch somewhere or they can hang on the wall.  

Each one has a distinct personality and expression.  Their faces are stamped - they came into existence before I learned how to draw faces.  Seems like a LONG time ago.....

I want to think of names for each of these Little Ladies.  Maybe old fashioned names like Maude and Gladys (no offense to anyone with those names!).  

I added hair and more beads to each one.

I like the pointy beads on this one.  And her weird hair - looks sort of like she was in an electrical storm.

And if you make this one larger you can see the copper-colored cord that decorates her whole little body and then turns into glasses!  Very fun to play with.

And I think that is the most important thing that happened with these ladies...I had FUN just adding beads and wild hair and smiling a lot.

I need to find some more treasures in my closet to play with!!!

 The last of the five dolls is in the mail going to keep a dear friend company.  The other four are going to Hang Out (get it?) at the Marketplace and make people smile. 

 Summer is Crazy Busy!!

But when I get time I play with easy things and made a few new collages.  These will go into the Marketplace and hopefully will make people smile.

I also want to rearrange and move some Marketplace items and will post a photo when I get it all fixed up.

This collage sort of came to be all by itself.  The pieces were just sitting there gathered together.  The main image of the peaceful young lady is actually rice paper which I had not tried to include before.  It works great and I may need to get more.

Can you tell this image is from a completely different source?

She is called Seeker even though there are no words on the front of the piece.  But she felt finished once I surrounded her with lots of lovely bits for her imagination to play with.

This one is so different that it doesn't seem to be from the same group.  It is a nod to Elizabeth Warren.  Some days we all just need to persist!!

I think that I am going to go back to fabric for new projects soon....and I can't wait to see what will appear on my work table.....

Collage Experiments

I'm still working through the painting class lessons.  Oh my they are strange and interesting.

This one required taking the small faces from the first lesson and tearing them into pieces.  Yup.  Tearing them apart.

 

 

Well I didn't really like them very much so that was OK with me.  In general you tear the mouth off and then tear between the eyes and down the nose.

These are three of the faces after they are torn but then the pieces are put back in place.  I wanted to have a clear record of the process.

Pieces of these three faces were then used to make the face on the left below.  If you look closely you can find the features.  The face on the right is just one face torn in half down the middle.
 

 The goal of the exercise is to take each of these "new" faces and use paint to create new paintings.

And this is how they turned out.

And ..... now I'm not sure what to do with them.  The one on the right doesn't look all that different but I sort of like her and wonder if she would be a good quilt character.  I've never made a portrait that is only half way there and wonder how to do the borders....  hmmmmmmm.........

The one on the left looks OK but I don't really "like her" much so I think she will just hang out on my design board.

So do I think this experiment was a success and a way to find new creative designs?  Not certain yet.  We'll see.  I will post any quilts that are born of this experiment.

Planning an Adventure

 A few days ago I updated my booth in the Marketplace and added this quilt. I made the quilt last summer in the very quiet times sheltering from the pandemic.  During that time I was experimenting with new color combinations to add more energy to my quilts.  I wasn't posting last year so this particular quilt was never on the blog.

This is a detail of the quilt showing some of the eye details and the beading.  I love to add beads to add texture to the finished quilt.

I like some of the negative spaces between the birds almost as much as the birds themselves.  

 

 

 

I never used to like using orange fabric.  But lately it is one of my favorite colors and I have a lot of different orange fabrics to choose from.  It would be quite startling to see actual birds with these colors - I think I would laugh out loud! 

 Swim Suit Girl Finally Finished

I chose the blue background because it looks like water.  And if she wasn't standing in water - well I don't know what she wouldn't have been doing....  But I like the way it turned out.  

It always surprises me when I look at the photos of the figure before stitching and in the finished version and see the huge difference that the black stitching makes in defining the figure.  Especially on the face.  There is also some decorative stitching in the hair that takes the quilt up a notch in interesting texture.  I'll try to take a photo and see if it turns out.

A Lady in a Swim Suit - Sort of....

 

So.... this is the latest drawing from the class.  Done with pastels in bright colors.

It is a casual quick drawing but I liked the way it turned out.  

I decided it would make a fun small quilt so I started playing with fabric (my favorite thing to do).

I overlapped the pieces slightly so that I could carry the lady around and see what she looked like on various colors of background.
 

 To mimic the original drawing I tried pink and blue.   The facial features are not fused yet so don't pay attention to them too much....

Or maybe purple???

Or maybe just pink??

Or what about black?  Colors always pop against black...

Or blue?  That looks like water and she is in what could be a swim suit.....

What do you think?  I think my decision will be based on which color makes my lady stand out from the background the most.

Keep in mind that no sewing is done yet so she will be much more defined when the black lines are added.

 Painting Again

 

I started the on-line painting class again.  The same class that led to my latest quilt of the face.

And this is the first painting from the section of the class on Color.  You begin by painting many colors all over the background and then you paint-out the surrounding area to make the figure stand out.  

And here she is.  I am pleased with the results and find the process sort of amazing - to see how the crazy mishmash of paint colors look like they were meant to be part of the body.  Naked ladies aren't part of what I usually focus on - but I like this one.  She is large - about 18" square.  And I am NOT comfortable painting LARGE.  I think it is good that I am operating outside my comfort zone.  

Second painting

 And then I tried the second Color class.  And I tried and tried - and finally gave up.

I thought about not posting this one at all because it is not a success.  BUT I learned a lot.  And that is the reason that I am taking these classes.  I have no intention of becoming a painter but I like to try new things....even when I fail.

So this class starts by painting the background bright red.  Then taking a large brush and just blocking the figure.  You can see the inspiration photo in the upper left corner if you squint.

And then you start to add in all sorts of different colors and shadows and highlights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And you keep adding shading and more color and some details.

If you saw my face as I was doing this you would laugh out loud.  I look like I am IN PAIN.  Because I am!  Trying a new media like paint - with a large brush - and a large painting - and struggling SO hard ----- it is actually sort of scary.  

Which is SUCH a good lesson for me as a teacher.  When I teach a class about fusible faces to traditional quilters who are trained to follow directions and use 1/4 inch seams and use patterns instead of their imagination - it is SCARY for them!  And I need to remember that.

 

  And this is where the painting is now.  I am putting it aside and admitting that some things just simply did NOT work. And I don't have the expertise to fix them.  Or, to be honest, the patience.  I would rather start over and try again.

I do like the red hair.  And her face is actually OK.  And I am proud of the hand!  Yes I am!  Hands are hard and this one is so much better than previous attempts.

But the chest looks like she has a white sweater on and it is supposed to look like skin because she is not wearing any clothes.  And I guess I could add more skin tones but ..... I need to let go of this attempt.

And here is the biggest problem... her face is TOO SMALL for her body.  It should be almost twice as large.  And I think that problem happened because of the sequence of steps in the lesson.  I do not have enough experience in sketching out the dimensions of the body parts with out more of a guideline.  But that is excellent information and knowledge to have going forward.

Because yes I am going to take the next lesson and see what happens.  Here is a secret: I feel very brave and vulnerable because I am posting this failed painting and people will see it.  Hopefully anyone who is just starting to look at this blog will look at previous posts to see my projects that were a success.

Till next lesson - - - - -

 

 

 Busy Busy 

 What a busy time this  has been.  And when my schedule gets too busy - I clean and organize.  It helps keep me calm. 

So - to keep busy and to accomplish something useful - I started reorganizing ALL OF MY FABRIC!!!

Was I insane?  Maybe a little bit.  Here is one of the challenging pieces of fabric that I "fussy cut" in order to find the exact colors that I wanted to use in a quilt - several years ago.  You can understand how hard it was to FOLD it so that it could sit on the shelf.

But I was persistent and this is how it looks now.  Much easier to store and to actually SEE the colors so that I use the crazy beautiful piece of wonderfulness instead of ignoring it.

And yes most of the other fabric is now folded.  I'll take a picture of my closet so you can see how nice it looks.