Pet Portrait Class, Part 1

I almost said no to this, but my great friend and enabler Cindy signed up and I decided I must join her.

I have lots of thoughts about collage portrait quilting after taking several classes over the past 6-7 18 months, and I’ll share those in this and future posts. 

Phyllis Cullen and Cindy Richard are the authors of “It’s All About the Face: Quilted Portraits”.  Cindy and I participated in online 5-class series devoted to human subjects, then signed up for a 2-part series on pet portraiture.

The pet portrait class reminded me a lot of the Emily Taylor class I took in late 2020, with a slight difference being how you apply the fabrics to the substrate. 

Here is the photo I worked from:

(This photo was taken just before we brought Mahalo into the brood;

from left to right: Meli, MokoTu and Malaki.)

And progress through the end of the second class:

I have mentioned before that I believe I’m more of a paint-by-number kind of gal, and I’m reminded of that when I attempt a collage piece.

Because I am process-oriented, it takes me a long time to get where I think I need to be.  I have to keep telling myself that perfection is not an ideal when creating; quilting is where I let go of a lot of “standards,” if you will.  When I let go, I can lose myself in the process and enjoy it.  That’s when quilting is most therapeutic for me. 

This technique is an extremely messy one, too.  I want to pull out all of the fabrics to search for the ones that will be perfect, and then remind myself about the letting go of perfection—LOL. 

And, the instructors aren’t focusing on realism; this was a lesson in value (as are their other classes).  But I wanted this one to be true in the colors sense because my boys are so pretty.

The project has been on my design wall for over a year due to other projects taking over my worktables.  I hope to return to it sometime this year, but wanted to give you just a peak at the project.  At least it's not in a bin! 

Go make!