I'm still working on my newest idea of coloring book portrait quilts. I made a version already which I showed earlier in December, or maybe November, and now I am influenced a woman named Claudia who took one of my classes at the IQF Houston Quilt Festival in November. Stroll down this post to see her photo! I started with wanting a curly Afro type hairstyle and I designer a different neckline and sleeve for the dress than the Coloring Book Callie deisgn. I mirror imaged the design for a change of pace. I selected 2 fun batiks with medium scale designs and a multi-color to pull coordinating colors for the eye shadow, lips, background and hair. The two quilts are the same until I quilted them.
I was inspired by Etta James, RuPaul and Beyonce for the hair and it matched the gold in the dress fabric. I loved this deep turquoise batik for the background and eyelids and the mouth became red. I used some of the wonderful Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics in the gradation of browns I have purchased for skin tones. LOVE!! I quilted the background in a 1" grid design and then in one direction from upper left to lower right I connected a diagonal quilting line-strictly playing around to see how it looks. I liked the look and will do this again.
I embellished with two different glitter nail polishes on the eye area as well as tiny rhinestones scattered in the background from a nail art kit from The Dollar Tree (cheap and a nice color variety!!)The nose got a rhinestone piercing and I finally used the little rainbow colored crocheted thingie I picked up on my travels for a hair accessory! I found some small size Christmas tree ornaments and I sewed one onto the ear area as an earring. Lots of bling!!
The pink version is the same but the quilting does not have the diagonal stitching. I fabric glued a 3D silk flower to this woman's hair. I decided to have gray hair for a change and some people do have gray hair so it is recognizable.
This is the real Claudia from Houston TX and she attended my Whimsical Selfie Portrait class last November. I have been reluctant to design an ear applique up to this class because ears can look like peanuts in a shell!! Upon seeing Claudia's short hairstyle and exposed ears I drew up an ear pattern for her and this has kick started me to add ears to my future portrait quilt designs such as this new project. Why use Claudia's name? The "C" name flowed with coloring book...
This will be a pattern I write up in early 2017. I had not designed it in time to include it in my fall 2017 quilt show teaching proposals. My other design did make the cut. On to something new!!
I made this quilt for The Celebration of Color Exhibit for the IQF Chicago Quilt Fest in April 2017. I wanted to combine my love of color and portrait quilts but try something different. I was inspired by a few rainbow themed motifs on Pinterest. The quilt had to be a minimum of 48" which is larger than I usually work. Vertically the quilt is 48" and horizontally it is 55". It fell into the Modern category and has a ton of negative space which I echo quilted in the coordinating color of the motif above and below it-that was boring! It was!
I wanted cat eye shaped eye glass frames (because they are my favorite!) and lips on the motifs and I "moved" the color one over on the color wheel which by default created an analogous color scheme! You'd a knew!
This is different than my "normal" portrait quilts but I wanted to go more modern. I was told by someone close to me that it wasn't finished because there were no face details. Sadness.
This is a close up of one of the faces. I thread painted brows, cheekbones, a jawline, a nose and lots of strands of hair to each motif. There are things to see from afar and then closeup. I used two different trims and machine couched them to the quilt for hair emphasis. I added rhinestones to the glasses to look retro. I hand sewed a leather button to the hair. I hand sewed beads to create an earring. The lips got fabric glitter paint or glitter nail polish. All had to be identical to appear repetitive.
This is another view of more of the details. I thought the face reminded me of the 1980s video from the band Wham from the song "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go! because of the neon-like influence. I love that song and it makes me happy and so do the cat eye glasses.
I know art is subjective but my feelings are hurt by my friend's comments because I spent a huge amount of time on this quilt and want it to be selected for the IQF Chicago quilt show. Time will tell.....Whether it gets chosen or not I will be using it in my color classes because there is plenty of things to discuss with color in this quilt. :)
I decided to sew another sample of my new Jingle Bella pattern using a Moda charm pack called "Holly Nights." The current charm packs, especially Moda, do not have 42 different fabric squares like they did when the fabric companies first introduced them to the quilt market. I love charm packs because of the wide range of fabric print varieties. When I used this particular pack there were few light squares which I prefer for the face. I challenged myself to only use the charm pack squares and not go into my fabric stash and the face is less blended than I would have liked.
I quilted the entire quilt with one thread, a Sulky rayon thread #943 1549, after I attached all the applique pieces with black thread. This thread ran nicely through my sewing machine and gave a pretty shimmer that repeated the metallic gold in the fabrics.
This is a close up of the face. I embellished with only metallic gold items I found some loose chunky gold "scatter" at Target for the eyelids; some gold nail polish on the mouth; a gold rhinestone for the nose piercing and some dollar store tiny nail art gold bling glued to the background.
This beaded trim was an unexpected find this past summer while at a rummage sale. The plan was for the first Jingle Bella sample but I had over-cleaned my sewing room and couldn't find it! I found the trim months later and hand sewed it to the bottom of the quilt after the binding was sewn on-again very sparkly!!
This is the original pattern sample also using a Moda charm pack but instead of traditional fabric it is whimsical. Same exact style of quilting. The choice of fabrics can really change the outcome and style of the quilts!
I changed thread colors in this project when I quilted it. As seen in the above photo I used a Christmas variegated thread on the face.
This pattern is available on my website www.laurieceesay.com for $10.00 Through PayPal.
