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Category: On the Design Wall

Boston Terrier on Blue

Boston Terrier on Blue

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As an art quilter, I generally don’t make two of the same quilts on purpose. But, while I was auditioning the green background on Piper’s portrait, my enthusiasm got out of hand and I was having so much fun, I just had to complete it. But, it was a commission and I had not even asked the client what colour she wanted! With a copy of the templates in hand, I made a second portrait of Piper and fortunately, the black & white version also looks great on this saturated blue.

Quilted pet portrait, boston terrier portrait

Below is the workup for Piper, showing that I had traced the line drawing onto a thin muslin background. The lines are almost all covered up, but hopefully you can see a few of them in the face area. Since the individual fabric shapes are all backed with Lite Steam-s-Seam II they are lightly sticky and I can simply fill in the spaces, one shape at a time.

Process for constructing pet portrait

Using a re-positionable fusible product such as Lite Steam-a Stam II allows you to view your work in the vertical plane as it progresses. No pins, no glue, no pieces slipping around! It’s truly a ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ approach and makes a world of difference.

Here’s what I learned from making Piper twice:

  1. Always find out what your client wants before getting too carried away!
  2. Photocopy your templates so you can make a new set if, needed.
  3. Using a re-positionable fusible lets you work in a vertical plane and truly see your work as it develops.

There you have it: making a piece twice can really have unexpected advantages.

A Golden Lab Emerges from My Stash

A Golden Lab Emerges from My Stash

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Labs appear to be the most popular dogs right now so it seemed fitting to do a quilted pet portrait of Max, a golden lab who is walked by our favourite dog walker, Paige, at Beyond The Leash Dog Walking. He’s on the design wall and looks like this:

quilted pet portrait

Here’s a recap of how this comes together. I began by posterizing the photo with Picasa and then went to work deciding how best to define all the different values (lightness/darkness).

Posterized photo

Once I had outlined the shapes, I marked them with their values and arrows to indicate how they would be layered. I traced this onto a sheet of tracing paper to create my master.

Master for pet portrait

The next job was to find the fabrics that would work for this portrait. I started pulling all the fabrics that might remotely be suitable and cut out a small swatch of each. I placed them on my value finder tool, aiming for eight different values of tan/cream/yellow and seven values of pink. From these, I chose the best matches.

Lab portrait

Next up was to trace the shapes to my Pellon Lite EZ and fuse these to the chosen fabrics. It didn’t take long before I realized this fusible product would not work for this job. I applied the sticky side of the fusible to the fabric and cut it out ok but when I tried to remove the paper backing from my cutout appliqué shape, it became clear that they overshot the amount of stickiness required. The tacky layer is so sticky that a thin plastic layer separating it from the paper backing pulled away from the paper, leaving me with a piece of fabric with a smooth plastic backing. I tried again and again to get it to work and after 5 failed attempts I threw the Pellon Lite EZ in the garbage. I went back to my Wunder Under and managed to finish the job. These are just some of the scraps remaining from all that fussy cutting.

Fussy cutting scraps

So how long did all this take, you ask? I didn’t set any stopwatches but it’s in the vicinity of 16 hours. The funny thing is this: time seems to disappear from my awareness when I’m doing this. Yes, it requires patience and lots of decisions but that feeling of being in the zone is a mighty fine feeling. And seeing the dog take form is the icing on the cake.

All Together Now…Altogether Now

All Together Now…Altogether Now

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The quilted pet portrait of Tinkerbelle is coming together at last. I’ve been describing this technique of transforming a photo of your pet into a quilted pet portrait in the last couple of posts. Today’s post is all about bringing a lot of little bitty fabric pieces together.

After fussy cutting out 85 pieces from 9 different fabrics, I started placing and fusing them onto a base I had cut out of fusible non-woven stabilizer. To be honest, this was a real challenge. Here’s the deal: many pieces had edges that had to be tucked under AND edges that had to go over the adjacent shapes. There were basically a lot of interlocking pieces. Read on to find out how this all came together.Belle’s quilted pet portrait

Step 9

So how did I bring all these pieces together? First, I spent time studying the original photo to observe depth of field — what parts are closer and which ones are further away? Then I did a dry run with all the major shapes to see how this interlocking would work. I made lots of mental notes and then I cleared the deck, making sure the keep the shapes together in numbered groups. I pinned the transparent master to my portable working surface, slipped the base underneath and one by one, removed the paper backing and placed the shapes in their final resting place.

Here’s the forehead region.  All those little arrows marking the ‘unders’ and ‘overs’  really come into play here as they tell me which edges to place underneath the others. Some of those pieces are small! I use tweezers to move them into place.

Quilted pet portrait

As I positioned each piece, I used a light touch with the iron to tack it to the base and avoided touching the edges that had to remain free to allow the next shape to tuck underneath. Here’s how she looks under the transparency when all the shapes are in place.

Quilted pet portrait

At this point, I need to look at her with a critical eye to decide if I really achieved the right values in the right place. I can see there are a few subtle adjustments to make however the construction is completed. I’m off to the fabric store now to find a background that will really make this portrait pop. Next up will be a post all about colour and focal points.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for reading my blog!

A Dog with a Curly Hairdo

A Dog with a Curly Hairdo

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This week, in my ongoing quest to learn all I can about rendering pet photos in fabric, I tackled a standard poodle cross….in fabric, not on the turf at the park! Nahannie is a dog with a seriously curly coat and ears covered in silky strands of hair (..or is that fur?). Oh yes, her muzzle is also on the bushy side. To top that off, she is all black. …

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