Portraits in Fabric

 I have been doing an on-line class via Zoom with Phyllis Cullen from America. The class is all about creating portraits in fabric.

I wanted to work on portraits last year but I got too involved with my circle series and never got the time for portraits. When the opportunity for a class with Phyllis came up, I jumped at the chance. The advantage of signing up for a class is that it makes you actually do the work instead of thinking about it.

There are only 6 of us in the class so we can be free to ask lots of questions and she doesn't mind us contacting her at all.

This is the first portrait I made from the class pattern. We all made this one first. All the portraits I have done are A4 or 8" x 11"

Class pattern

We used four fabric values and I used batik fabrics.

Next, we had to use our own photo and Phyllis checked the pattern that we made to make sure it was ok.

I used blue batiks this time for my portrait of Adam, my oldest son.

Adam

It looks like him and I thought it was pretty good for a start.

Then I found a photo of one of my daughters to use.

Bec in Fabric

It does look like her but I used ordinary quilting cotton and it was much harder to get the fine detail, there are little bits of fayed fabric on her face. She wasn't very impressed because she thought she looked fat! I must admit she was 6 months pregnant, but it is really hard to get a photo to use. My family do not appreciate me coming up to them with a camera, snapping photos.

Next, I tried my grandson Jack and went back to using batik fabrics.

Jack in Fabric

I tried something different his time, I used coloured variegated thread for his hair. Once again, it does look like him but I am starting to understand faces and portraits better now and I know there is room for improvement.

Phyllis thought I was being too safe with my fabric choices and encouraged me to be more adventurous. She suggested that we do a pet portrait because pets don't complain about what colour we make them.

I couldn't find a photo of our cat so I had to take one. Poor Misty is 16 years old and has kidney disease and not really feeling her best these days, but she let me take a photo.

Misty the cat

Here is Misty's portrait and I think I was very adventurous with the colour.

Misty in Fabric

I am really enjoying making the portraits, we only have one lesson to go and we are going to learn a collage technique next, it's where you use lots of different fabrics instead of 4 or 5.

So, I have decided to continue making portraits this year and see where it takes me!

Bye for now,

Linda