A Discovery in the Making

Last fall, while sorting through my collection of pet portraits, I picked up a lab portrait that I had begun in 2015 and finished quilting it (the brown lab on the left, below). At the time, I had been experimenting with pet portraits to learn two things: the minimum number of values and pattern pieces needed to make a pet portrait. For this particular lab portrait, the answer turned out to be 7 values and 15 pattern pieces.

That discovery lit a creative fire and in my excitement, I put the lab project aside. I continued making portraits with 6 to 7 values, each time introducing more fabrics and increasing the number of pattern pieces. You can see the result in the two portraits below which were made from the same photo, three years apart. They were both made with 7 values of fabric. I used seven brown fabrics in the portrait on the left and over fifty grey/black fabrics in the portrait on the right. I also increased the number of pattern pieces considerably.

That experience was the ‘light bulb’ 💡moment when the key to making a fabric pet portrait from a photo became crystal clear. In a word, it is value. Our ability to see value in a photo and in fabric is the key.

Seven fabric values were used in both of these fabric collage portraits.

Seeing in 3 Dimensions

If you are a curious sort like me, you will want to know why this works (er… make that, ‘need to know’ why this works). In a nutshell, our brains are wired to interpret colors and value but few of us are aware of the role that value plays in interpreting what we see.

In reality, value is one of the reasons we perceive shapes, lines, depth and dimensions in the objects around us. If you were totally color blind, you would only see objects in shades of grey. In other words, you would only see the world around you as color values rather than the colors themselves. Therein lies the key to representing realism in a fabric collage portrait: imagine that you are color blind, then …

Select collage fabrics that have the same values as the individual shapes in your reference photo.

I have named this approach to fabric collage, Colorblind Collage. The beauty is that anyone can learn this trick and once you do, you can’t un-learn it. How can I be sure? It’s because I have taught this method to people from 11 to 80 years old, both quilters and non-quilters, and I’ve seen and felt their excitement when their pet seems to emerge from the fabric collage and they experience their light bulb moment.

This method is based on our innate physiology so it can be applied to any fabric collage, not just pet portraits. If you’re curious and want to know more about making a fabric collage from a photo, click the button below to learn more.

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