Sapphire and Topaz

This is the photo of the brain buster quilt!! It is big for me at 51" x 40" and I am entering it in an unknown contest based on a minimum size requirement. The design influence began with a small photo of a hairstyle in one of the beauty supply catalogs I receive. I have a female attorney as a hair customer and consulted with her about copyrights and using this photo. After the conversation I decided to mirror image the woman in the picture, change the colors of the hair, and I added things to the face and hair and took away the body of the woman. I feel it is okay now and is not a copy but an inspiriation. Any thoughts on this subject??

I then decided to work in a blue and orange color palette because I was doing the lecture on the elements of design and these colors kept popping up in the research. I also have not worked in this color combo so why not. Pink is my favorite color but orange is my new favorite and I had fun with these colors. They remind me of Appleton West High School colors and the orange reminds me of summer, sunsets and warmth!!

I chose a realistic color palette for the face and suprisingly I kept the face fairly simple without glitter and rhinestones because I thought it turned out nice the way it was. The way the batik was cut I was able to get great shading without trying too hard!!

For the hair I found this great metallic which had both blue and orange and a batik that was interesting. for the highlights/lowlights.

The background was made of various oranges cut into squares and I sewed many, one weeks worth of, circles to look like a bullseye using an orange variageted thread. The blue outer border repeats the circle motif and is free motion quilted with a freeform flower design using a Sulky Blendables thread. I always block my quilts when they are finished but this piece became very distorted from the circular quilting and I "preblocked" the quilt and then added the flowers, binding, and embellishments and blocked it again when it was completed.

Next I used three different large scale florals and fussy cut them to add to the outer border, the hair, cheeks and a few scattered. I then sewed blue felt and regular buttons to repeat the circle theme and orange flower buttons, both felt and regular, to the quilt. I have beads in both colors in various sizes to accent the flowers using Silamide thread which is awesome!!

This quilt took me so long mostly because of all the machine quilting and hand stitched beads/buttons. I named it after the color theme and "Blue and Orange" seemed a bit bland so it became "Sapphire and Topaz" since topaz is my birthstone so it seemed fitting.