Category: Portrait Quilts

Falling in Love — A Portrait Quilt

A portrait quilt—all in colour—of a joyful young couple, using fabric collage against a pieced background, with lots of thread-painting.

Last year, a dear friend entrusted me with the task of making a wedding anniversary gift for her daughter (whom I shall simply call A). It was to be a portrait of A and her husband, to be called, what else, H!

I chose to combine two pictures, taking the gorgeous couple’s faces and figures from one and placing them against a background of a yellow maple tree during fall. The couple had met and fallen in love in Canada, so this seemed only appropriate!

The quilt which turned out to be much more difficult than what I had envisaged. For one, both of my subjects were smiling broadly!

That gorgeous smile!
H’s smile Falling in Love portrait quilt

H’ s eyes were behind his glasses and getting that shading right is always a problem.

Details of the thread painting!

H had a delightful dimple, but how do I portray that in a fabric collage? Not to forget getting that beard right.

The full face —with the dimple!

Then there was A’s beautiful long shiny, silky hair with highlights in reds, auburn like the colours of fall around her!

Glowing with happiness!

Let us not forget the clothes and the accessories.

Details of A’s leather jacket with its zipper
The Adidas strap!

The maple tree in the background was not easy!

The maple tree in fall—I appliquéd some branches and leaf cut-outs randomly on the pieced background

I wanted to show some sunlight peeping through the tree, to reflect the joy on this couple’s face.

The sky peeps out from between the yellow leaves.

Despite the long, long hours it took, it was all worth it and I had quite a sense of satisfaction and achievement when it was finally done! ( I do not recall exactly the dimensions of the quilt, but I vaguely remember it was about 32” x 40”)

So I now leave you with a couple of videos of the quilt.

Falling in Love— the gorgeous couple! May they continue to smile together lifetime after lifetime!

I hope A and H love the quilt as much as I enjoyed making it.

The Poncho Girl – A Portrait of Tana

A Portrait Quilt

I am overwhelmed with emotion when I try to write anything about this portrait of my daughter…I will try to just stick to photos of how it was done!

This photo, so quintessentially my Tana, was my inspiration for the quilt! I started working on it in January 2022, about a year from when she passed on.

Vectorization done on the Vector Q app

The collage came up pretty quickly!

What followed were a couple of trips—one exploring Rajasthan and another one in to Gujarat! Finally got back to working on it, hoping to finish it by her birthday in April!

Sadly, didn’t feel quite done on her birthday. Needed a lot of more quilting to add depth to it!

( Note that I am trying ‘contour quilting’ quilting on it, where the quilting follows the face contours)

This looks better, right? But I don’t like the way some of the lighter threads stand out against the darker areas! Gives it a harsh look! Not for my gentle darling, it wouldn’t do!

I used Inktense pencils to reduce contrast in the in-between areas and darken some stitching lines so that the threads matched the fabric!

Tip: A bit of Cadmium Orange or Burnt Orange does wonders to soften harsh contrasts in portraits, especially with our Indian skin types! It is great for lip-colour too!

A close-up of her smile

See the Inktense at work!!

The hair…

Were those the most beautiful eyes in the world that mirrored the purest soul that ever lived?

I cut out a poncho I had made for her and used it to dress her! The flowers and leaves were also cut out from the poncho.

The quilt was mounted on a ( mounted) canvas, which makes it easy to hang. It now lives in my living room where I can look at her while watching TV…

…or touch her, talk to her, smile at her every time I walk past her!

She smiles right back!

So that is my Tana in her poncho!

Who’s The Prettiest of Them All?

I bought this panel of the Frozen princesses To make a quilt ( or wall hanging) for my grand-niece who is a great fan of the two!

The Frozen Princesses Anna and Elsa are my grand-niece K’s favourites!

She was due to visit us and I thought of a quick gift for her. But how boring would this be!

So I came up with this idea.

K goes to the centre of the panel, while the other two look at her admiringly.

I printed her face on a printer-ready fabric sheet after calculating the size I would need to make it.

Everything got more complicated than necessary because I planned to put K on the right side. I cut out the pink princess ( is that Elsa or Anna?) before I realised that that would make my darling Princess K an ‘outsider’ because the other two had interlocked arms.

So I disengaged their arms and locked them with Princess K’s who moved to the centre. Ah, that’s the way I like it. The Disney Princesses look at her admiringly ( and a bit enviously?). The Resident Consultant did not think much of my original idea of a silver dress for his Princess. So I retained the silver yoke and made her blue dress from…a rayon grocery bag! ( Jaipur is a big exporter of women’s clothing. With single use plastic being banned in India, our shopkeepers are using bags made from export-surplus fabric and export-reject dresses).

The quilting was kept to a minimum. ( Also because I had just over a couple of hours for the quilting and finishing). I folded the lighter pink border to the back of the quilted piece, leaving the darker plum inner border to frame the quilt. No binding. The top border became the sleeve.

Not that my Princess minded the short-cuts taken to finish her portrait! She couldn’t believe what she saw.

“How? wow! how? wow…”, she exclaimed!

And here is the Princess herself, posing with her quilted wall-hanging.

Princess K loves her quilt!

Now that done, I have to decide what comes up next!