Welcome Gilligan, the latest curly haired grad from the Pet Portrait class I taught at the Victoria Quilters Guild Fall Frolic in November. Your mom did a fantastic job of your portrait with all those curly locks and great eyes, nose & mouth that project your look of — please don’t leave me!
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. …
It always feels great to finish a portrait or any project, for that matter, doesn’t it? The latest portrait off the design wall is this black lab. It’s the second time I’ve used this lab’s photo. The first version was done in brown. This time I wanted to reduce the number of pieces to see how few I could use but still have a decent portrait. I also wanted to try making it in white, black and grey fabrics, to be more representative of the actual midnight black lab. I was pleased with the result but I think I am going to try adding more detail for better results in my next portrait.
The background fabric you see in the photo below is not pieced. It is a navy blue/cream striped fabric. I quilted it horizontally along the dark stripes. After quilting the background, I attached the portrait by zigzagging around the perimeter with an invisible thread. I free motion straight stitched, through all the layers, just inside the edge of each piece of fabric using a matching colour of thread. The final step was fusing and stitching down the internal border, a 1/2″ black strip.
