Quilted Face

In November, I did a class on quilted faces with the very talented Jacqui Karl

This photo shows 3 happy friends nearing the end of our weekend. We all enjoyed the experience of taking the lesson and making it our own. I loved the experience from beginning to end, and now have so many new ideas bouncing around in my head I'm sure you'll be seeing more mixed media quilts from me in the future. My base fabric was a white pattern on white, so when I painted it I got a lovely resist effect. It was lovely to dry our work outside for a while too 

Next we traced on the eyes, lips, hair outline - painted the eyes and lips. I altered my eye and lip shapes a little to look more like my own art journal faces

then used thick black Spagetti thread for the outline and face detail

Filling in the hair piece with our own designs

By the end of Day 1 she looked like this

Started filling in the face with a subtle variegated thread - I really enjoyed defining areas with my free-motion stitching instead of the stippling which was in the sample

Switching threads to a pink variegated for her cheek and out into the background 

and then a pink/blue for the background = End of Day 2. 

Click on any photo to see the stitching detail.
I took a photo of the back which shows I did have a bit of trouble with the black thread knotting on occasion, but it does look quite striking

Then I was home and following my #arteveryday idea to try and stitch a little and often 

- using different threads as I go through colour-changes in the background

Ready to trim and add binding : 

Back view just for fun  - I do love colour but this is inspiring for a maybe-future piece

In the end I decided a flat binding that you didn't see on the front was best. I cut my normal 2" wide binding, ironed it in half and stitched it on as usual.

Then overstitched the seam into the binding.

Folded around and hand stitched to the back.

I had to attach the hanging sleeve by hand-stitching beneath the top binding. It is too much bulk to include in that seam as is my usual practice. The finished quilt size is 18" x 22". I am so VERY happy with how she turned out ♥