Double Portrait - Part Three

This is a continuation of 2 previous posts about the making of the Double Portrait of my husband.

I stitched around all of the edges with invisible thread, and then layered and quilted it.   Several colors of blue, tan, silver, and black were used in both free motion quilting and with a walking foot.  I had to bury a lot of thread starts and stops, but it was fine to have some hand work to do on Thursdays and in front of the TV.  It is faced and ended up being 38" W  48" H.

I hope you like it!

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!

Shadow Quilt from Bryce Canyon National Park

Several years ago, my husband and I went camping and hiking in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.  It was really different and fun to hike DOWN into the canyon, around all the hoodoos, and back up to the canyon rim.  The hoodoos are the tall spires of rock, which are so prominent in the park.

I snapped this interesting picture of my husband with his backpack, coming through one of the arches.  The sun was just right to cast a shadow of him on the wall of the canyon, and it reminded SO MUCH of the Don Quixote by Pablo Picasso.  Look at the pictures and tell me if you think so too!

This is just the type of picture that begs for it to be memorialized in a quilt.  My hesitation over the years has been how to actually make this one.  Should it be painted?  Should it be pieced or appliqued?  Could it be simplified and done another way?  I am terrible at portraits and am terrified of doing this one and having it end up looking nothing my husband.  Best to just dive in and see what happens.

Stay tuned to see what I did.