Double Portrait - Part One

I've challenged myself to do a double portrait of my husband.  I took a picture of him looking into a mirror while we were vacationing in Yellowstone National Park.  

We've stayed at the historic lodge at Old Faithful Geyser several times and love the rustic rooms and the architecture of the building.  If I'd had my way when I was younger, I would have liked living in a log cabin in the forest somewhere.  Now that I'm older, I prefer living near the resources that old people need - like medical, social groups, family, and friends.  So, I live out my fantasy while on trips, and much prefer rustic lodges to fancy hotels.

Well, back to the topic.  I liked the picture because it reminded me of one done in 1960 by Norman Rockwell, when he was looking into a mirror and painting a self portrait. 

I used the posterizing method of taking the picture into Photoshop, where you change the image to gray scale, then blur the edges.  That image was traced and enlarged and became my pattern.  I picked blue fabrics for his shirt, and light flesh tones for his head.  Here are two sections cut and fused and ready to assemble.

I didn't trace enough accurately to do his face, and tried to draw them to scale on the pattern.  But, my drawing skills are horrible and I couldn't get his eyes and nose correctly.  If it wasn't a portrait of somebody that I know, I could have just winged it.  But it had to actually look like him and not a characterization.  So, I took the picture back into Photoshop and enlarged just his face to the same size as the pattern, then traced that and overlayed it onto the posterization to get the 4 shades placed in the right spots.  Believe me when I say that these design details stretch my brain - both during the day and at night when they keep me awake.

I have a lot of supplies to do this type of work, but ran out of Teflon coated poster boards after I had only done 2 sections.  My solution was to use parchment paper taped to a couple of other poster boards instead of buying more Teflon pressing sheets. (It's not likely that I will need more than 2 boards in the future.)  Anyway, here are the reflection parts of his shirt and his face.

I hope you like it so far!

Leftover Improv - Part Two and Final - Landscape Improv

This is a continuation of a previous post about the making of the leftover improv piece.

I kept adding hand embroidery to this piece in colored thread and in simple embroidery stitches.  They added texture and interest to this piece.  And then, I decided to do some big stitch hand quilting.  This takes so much longer than machine quilting (which can be done in a few hours).  I chose a variety of threads and after doing a few lines with pearl cotton, size 8 and very large needles, I ditched using them for quilting.  They were fine on the hand embroidery, but pulled the batting through to the front while quilting.  I liked the WonderFil spaghetti thread, size 12.  And pearl cotton, size 8 as well.

Here is a look at the work in progress.  For some reason, my camera picks up pink, but it is really black and white.

I worked on this when I needed handwork with my small quilt group, and occasionally worked on it while watching TV at night.  I wasn't in a hurry to get this piece done.  It was more about the slow stitching.  So, after many months,  it was finally done.  It was faced and left wonky.  It measures 30" W x 40" H.  I'm calling it "Landscape Improv".

I hope you like it.  It's going to be auctioned off in November at the Clark County Quilters guild meeting.