2026 quilts – betukbandi

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.

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! 😁

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!

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).