My latest quilting endeavor is making fabric portraits using a process taught by Esterita Austin. (See esteritaaustin.com) Esterita teaches how to make a face using parts of multi-valued fabrics to form the shadows or shading found in the original photograph. I initially took her one-day class at Pacific International Quilt Festival in October of 2011 and, just recently, took her five-day class at the Empty Spools Seminars in Asilomar in March 2012 (see Asilomar 2012 under my blog). Esterita taught us to first make portraits of ourselves before we attempt to make portraits of family or friends, since we know our own looks best. When I first began making these fabric portraits, I used unconventional commercial fabrics rather than hand-dyed fabrics because they were less expensive. Now I use them because I love them!
Below are several of the fabric portraits I have made since I learned this technique - starting with one of the first one I ever made and ending with my most recent. As I mentioned above, most are of myself with just a couple of attempts to make someone else. Even though I used the same photograph and pattern for the last two - they take on a life of their own!
Click on any of the thumbnail photos below to see several close up photographs of that portrait and, in some instances, the process by which it was made.
