The Woman With The Belted Dress x Two

This is a pattern I drew up and used for a several quilts a few years ago. I like the asymmetrical placement of the woman, the long hair and the halter dress. When I first designed it the woman was very thin. I thought "who looks like that?" and I added curves to the poor thing so she looked like a real woman! I added the belt because it was fun to accessorize and I can use more fabric!! That is the back story of this design.

Today I used this pattern to make these two wall hangings for two separate reasons. The quilt in the first photo is for a fundraiser in my community for the local free clinic. I want to contribute a donation to this worthy cause. The dress fabric is a hippy psychedelic fat quarter I picked up on my journeys and simply could not put it in another quilt where it seemed appropriate. But my lady could wear it as her dress! I have fallen in love with chevrons and this background fabric was a great contrast to the red hair and the dress. I added red glitter to the hair, glitter nail polish to the eyes and lips (makeup!) and rhinestones for jewelry. I did not add a flower to her hair because I felt there was enough activity with the patterns of the various fabrics and it would have looked too busy. I have to part with this quilt next week. :(

 

Quilt number two is for my local quilt guild's next challenge on using someone else's "ugly" fabric! I randomly picked the large paisley print. Not the worst fabric in the world but large! I liked the blue/orange combination and ran with that. I chose the paisley as the dress and had this great hand dyed orange velvet for the hair. I tried to downplay the paisley using value. I purposely selected a background that had low contrast to the paisley while boldly using orange for the hair, lips and belt. I embellished with an orange marker in the hair, rhinestones for jewelry and a felt flower button painted with blue nail polish with a bead in the center in the hair. The challenge isn't due until August but I was in the mood to work on it now. If any of my guild members see it before the reveal oh well!!

 

The two quilts look quite different to me based on fabric chose. I like the red haired woman quilt better because I prefer bright colors with lots of contrast  but I love the velvet hair too! Which one do yu prefer?