More Fabric Portraits

 I have done a couple more fabric portraits since my last post about them in early February.

This time I tried to do a self-portrait. I chose 5 levels of fabric and left them out on my table overnight.

First choice of fabrics

When I looked at the fabrics the next morning, I thought I was being too safe and needed to challenge myself a bit more. I pulled out some more fabrics to work with.

Final choice of fabrics

Here is what the portrait looked like after I had used the 3 lightest fabrics.

3 values done

You can still see it's a face but it really shows how important those darker values are.

Here is the portrait with all 5 values.

Portrait of me.

When I showed my portrait to our on-line group, someone thought that my second value was too light. I must admit that there is a lot of light values in it because my skin is quite pale.

I considered making it again using a lightly darker colour but then I couldn't be bothered and used a fabric pen to darken the value!

Here is the portrait with the pink darkened.

portrait changed

I wish that I hadn't done it now, it looks too pink. One of my friends said that I look sunburnt!! Oh well, just another lesson not to jump into changing things too soon. 

I think that I will do another one now, but maybe I 'll find another photo to use. Next time, I'll stay away from pink.

I also did another portrait of my cat, Misty. Here is the first one that I did.

Cat portrait 1

This time I used the collage method, where I cut up little pieces of fabric in 3 different values. I laid the fabrics down on a line drawing that I drew on a piece of Steam a Seam 2 fusible. When I had all the pieces of fabric in place, I ironed them down. Because there were still lots of loose bits of fabric, I put a layer of black tulle over the top.

Cat Collage

This is what it looked like after quilting.

Cat Collage

Quilting definitely improves a piece. I liked doing both methods but I didn't enjoy quilting the last collage one as much. There were quite a few layers of fabric and the machine had to really work hard to quilt it.

I prefer it if quilting is smoother and freer. I put tulle over the entire top instead of just the cat and it did darken the background a bit, if I did it again, I would try just having the tulle over the cat.

I must get on to doing some more portraits so I can improve and not forget how to do it. I have been distracted lately doing some surface design techniques. There are only so many hours in a day and you can't do everything.

Bye for now,

Linda