Selfie

The latest challenge from my Fifteen by Fifteen quilt challenge group was Photoshoot. It has been reveal and the results are stunning. All the creativity of this amazing group of artists you can discover visiting FIFTEEN BY FIFTEEN

From the very beginning I knew I would be making a selfie quilt. I don’t consider myself photogenic and I seldom take selfies so I used few photos that were taken by my friends, with my quilts behind me. One of them that I chose was this:

I photo shopped it into a paper sketch:

I wanted to use a new technique making monoprint sketch of my face on a piece of my own hand dyed fabric with the intent to quilt and thread paint it. After few unsuccessful tries I came up with this sketch that was a reverse of what I originally wanted:

I didn’t like the background either but decided to proceed with the quilting. I know that quitting is the easiest way to go, but often I push myself to the uncomfortable zone, and sometimes I get surprised with the result. So here is the result:

And here are detailed images:

My face looked like me but I didn’t like the color, and I understood that this quilt said nothing about me, about what I love and what I do in life.

I decided to give Photoshoot another try. I picked up another photo of me. This one had my quilt in a background. The quilt was made with my favorite irregular log cabin blocks:

Using simple photo editing trick I changed it into a pencil sketch and printed out two images:

And a reverse of the first one:

This time I decided to go monochromatic using only my own indigo dyed fabrics. To get an idea of how many shades I would need, again, I photoshopped the original photo:

To make it simple I chose 5 shades of indigo fabrics:

I was making this quilt using fused applique technique. The product I used was Soft Fuse:

I was going to draw all shapes to be appliqued on a paper side of this product and fuse them with iron in place on a piece of background fabric. To know what shapes I needed to cut out, and where to place them, I had to make another sketch on a transparent piece of paper. I had to keep in mind that after fusing in place I would get a reverse image though.

I will not go into details of fussed applique, just wanted to share how my quilt evolved.

Just after fusing in place these two simple shapes I could already recognize myself:

I kept adding more details:

But before even finishing the face I started making irregular log cabin blocks for the background of this quilt:

Finally all the shapes were fused in place and the background was added:

Then the quilting began:

Finally it was all quilted, cut to size and faced. I quilted log cabin blocks in a simple way like I always quilt them, and continued the same design of quilting into the piece of fabric that my face was fused on. That helped to make my face blend into a background:

I think this Selfie quilts is much more personal, what selfie is supposed to be actually. My face, emerging from a log cabin quilt made from indigo dyed fabrics shows not only how I look like, but also tells the story of my life.