From 2019 is this quilted portrait, meant as a gift for a daughter who had lost her mother…a precious memory from happier times, stitched onto fabric…
I made this quilt as a gift for someone who wanted to gift it to a friend who had recently lost her beloved mother to cancer…
I began with a coloured image, simplified it by removing the background and cropping it to focus on the faces, converting it to black and white and playing around with the contrast till I had an image that held your attention. I then posterised it on Pinetools, a free website, where you can do several great things with your pics online!
Here are some of the steps of the collage and quilting process…
In the absence of a design wall, I worked on a thermocol board!
I used the freezer paper method for the collage. I printed one copy of the posterised image full size on regular paper and glued it together. This is the guide. Since there were two figures, I worked on them one at a time.
I printed another copy of the image on freezer paper and cut out pieces from it, use them as templates to build the collage on muslin.
Building up the mother’s image…
You can see that I have skipped the really tiny curves on the templates. I was working only with glue, no fusible, so this was the way to go. If you have your fabric prepped with two-way fusible, you can cut out much finer detail on your templates.
The coloured clothes add interest to the monochromatic collage.
The figures are assembled and time to start on the quilting. I chose a dark background so that focus stayed on the mother-daughter duo.
Contour quilting…The mother is done, except for a tiny detail…That blue earring adds a lovely 3-D effect to the quiltThe quilting for the daughter’s hair
And an earring for the daughter too!
Something to jazz up the daughter…I was really happy with that striped t-shirt, which was also collaged.I shaded out the quilting on the background too
Though the background quilting was a simple meander, I shaded it out from the figures, changing threads from black, through blues to white.
Here is the back!
Admire the quilting from the back!
And here is the final quilt!
A Precious Memory
Hope you enjoyed looking at the process as much as at the final product!
A quilted portrait of a beautiful couple setting sail on to a new adventure together, where only the sky is the limit!
This is a recent portrait I completed. There was a bit of a hurry as my dear, dear friend P wanted to gift it to her daughter N and son-in-law A for their wedding anniversary.
This time, I had some problem in coming up with the final image I was going to work with. In the original pic, the couple was standing on a boat against a stunning backdrop of rocks and sea, but I had to get rid of that. I removed all the background and decided to concentrate on the faces, as there was a size constraint too; P asked that I stay within 24”x 24”. What I really regretted removing was N’s hand from A’s shoulder —it was so sweet! But never mind, we work with what we have to work with.
While finalising the vectorised and posterised image I was going to use as my base, I spent a lot of time on various apps, none of which seemed to give a satisfactory result. The free version of Vector Q which I have been very happy with so far, now seems to give highly simplified and unsatisfactory results. I was not happy with what Poster Shine gave me either. I got something I like from Prisma, but that needed to be further modified. I took that to Chat GPT and Google Gemini and combined elements from both set of images. Warning: Do not rely on their ‘numbering according to value’! It is all wonky. You end up doubling your work. Guess how I know?
And finally, would you believe it, what seemed to work best was the picture edit menu of good old MSWord!!
Chat GPT gave me this image, which I modified using Gemini and MSWord
I printed some of the elements on commercial prepped printable fabric, cut them out and collaged them to the picture. This included the straw hat, as it was too complicated to collage and would have taken up a great deal of time to do, without adding any value to the portrait. The other was the sunglasses, with their reflections. Of course, I painted over these with my Inktense pencils to add brightness to the printed fabric. I have used hand-dyed fabrics by Kalindi’s Quilts and a couple of batiks from my stash for the skin tones. Kalindi’s bundle seems to be perfect for our Indian skin tones and hair, though I do add a bit of burnt orange and vermillion from my Inktense box as I love the warmth they add and how they merge the edges without muddying them. I painted the lips (again with Inktense) as I could not find the right tones in my fabric stash.
Happy with how it looked, I did the quilting, using a tight meander for the faces, changing thread colour with every change of fabric. I skipped my black tulle (otherwise a constant for my quilted collages) as there did not seem to be too much fraying and it seemed to dull down the portrait.
Quilting down the collage
Lesson learnt: ‘Steam a seam’ works great. For one , it stays put while you get the collage together and fuses beautifully. But…yes, there is a ‘but’…I prefer the feel of Misty Fuse. It is not as heavy and does not gum up the needle at all. So if there are several layers, I would go in for Misty Fuse. For a single, or a lesser number of layers, steam a seam would be the preferred choice.
In the meanwhile, I kept sharing black and white pics of the portrait with dear P, because that is what I had told her I would be doing! (I can imagine her delighted surprise when from the parcel emerged a coloured portrait!)
So without much ado, a few pics of the finished quilt…
I thoroughly enjoyed adding the salt and pepper to A’s beard! 😁A close-up of A’s shirt collar
I always love to add a 3-D element to the portraits I do. I searched Amazon till I came up stuff similar to what they were wearing in their original picture. So A got his platinum (!) chain and N got her gold and diamond(!😄) nose-ring and earrings! The thick chain was impossible to stitch to the fabric or insert into it, like I did with N’s jewellery. So I ended glueing it up with super-glue.
I also love that little ‘band’ of fabric on A’s hat. It adds such a ‘holiday fun’ look to the picture!
The finished portrait
Here is a video which explores the portrait in greater detail. (Please ignore the stray threads; I did ask my friend P to clip them off before she gifted the portrait to her bachchas).
The Sky is the Limit—Sail on!
I quite love the way it turned out. Don’t you get that outdoorsy feeling when you look at it? Wide blue skies and endless horizons?
So now, one is ready to launch the next project! Happy Quilting to all my quilter friends.
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 zipperThe 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.
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!
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!
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