collage quilt – betukbandi

A Precious Memory…Mother-Daughter Quilted Portrait

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.

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.

The mother is done, except for a tiny detail…

That blue earring adds a lovely 3-D effect to the quilt

And an earring for the daughter too!

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!

And here is the final quilt!

Hope you enjoyed looking at the process as much as at the final product!

To my quilter friends, Happy Quilting!

The Sky is the Limit…A Quilted Portrait

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.

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).

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.

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!