Design Wall Monday - 5/16/11

Ok - put on your rose colored glasses and remember that I don't normally "do" art quilts...

This past Saturday my quilt guild sponsored semi-local artist Mary Diamond, http://www.squareonpoint.com/, to teach Fabric Portraiture. Be sure to check out her what's new and gallery sections to get an idea of what these are supposed to look like when they are completed. It was a fun class but art quilts just seem so fiddly to me and I'm not sure I'll do another. Heck, this one still needs a lot of finishing work so it'll take me a while.

These were my two fav class samples. Up close all the hand stitching is a bit gaudy but when you step back, they are amazingly realistic.

We started class with a blank canvas of fabric basted to felt. We sketched out the face outline and spent what felt like hours on the eyes…working with small bits of fabric to create the whites, irises and eyelids followed by hand stitching eyelashes and eyebrows. After lunch we worked on the mouth and shading the face. The face was shaded with a combination of dried Sharpie pens, spray paint and blusher. We all have hand stitching to catch up on and then the hair.

Mary came with us to the LQS to help us pick out fabric for the hair and background.  When the hair (some are just doing hats) is finished the body will be cut out and can be incorporated into a larger quilt or I'll just probably mount it on the fabric as a small wall hanging. I'll be using some of the flowers to create a necklace to blend into the shoulders.

We have a guild show in July and we are thinking of displaying our finished faces...