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Elta Kay Hooper
Taylor, Arizona (formerly from Glendale, in the Phoenix metro area)
- she did a great job making a CutWork Portrait Quilt of her grandson, Colin age 5
"I started a Pixel Quilt portrait of my granddaughter over in 2010. Although the project was really fun, especially seeing the image come together, it was a lot of work -- not hard, just a lot of cutting, then stitching, and it required 30 different fabrics. It took a few months to complete.
I've been looking for a less laborious method of portraying her brother, Colin, and Trudy's reverse applique idea was perfect.
If you have experience with Photo Editing it is easy to adapt a good quality picture for the process. If doing a portrait, think about how facial characteristics and expression will translate as a few lines cut out of fabric.
After choosing a photo and guided by elements of Trudy's instructions (I'm using a much older photo software), I was able to enlarge it and create an image for tracing. Unless your software gives you a good line image of your subject, creating the actual cutting pattern can require some drawing ability, but there's room for "artistic license", too. This was the most involved aspect of the project for me. It takes some thought to "engineer" where the line breaks are best placed. I didn't want the cut image to fall apart, but still wanted as much outline detail as possible.
I used two lengths of freezer paper slightly overlapped and ironed together to have a single piece big enough to use for the pattern. The paper can be ironed to the fabric that is to be cut, but it will not stick tight. I still used lots of pins before cutting. Preparing the fabric and doing the actual cutting went very quickly.
The light fabric was purchased from Walmart and I used the fusible I had on hand, Sulky Wonder Under. I'm not familiar with Pellon other than fusible interfacings. I have quite a few "thready" little spikes on some of the cut edges. I do think a heavier fusible, maybe like Heat 'N Bond, would eliminate that, especially when economical fabric (OK - cheap! ) is used. Maybe tighter woven (quality) fabric is the answer there, or to be really sure, a combination of both better fabric and heavier bonding.
I intend to start this project again making a few changes in some line details and maybe trying a single edge razor blade where I want to make very small angled cuts."
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| Elta Kay added some highlights to his eyes - don't they look fantastic??!! |
