On a roll

Sometimes, things just work out and one thing after the other falls into place - well, makes up for the times where it doesn't I suppose lol. The July break has been a bit like that for me, I felt I really was on a roll. I didn't get done what I had planned to do originally, but I got into a number of other projects (dying and painting cotton, canvas, frost cloth and silk chiffon, making placemats for Mum, making some canvas art with the kids, heaps of fmq etc.) including the long awaited third and final portrait of my sons:

My, I need to take a photography course one day....

I used the same technique as for the other two portraits I finished in January, adapted slightly from the one feature in the Quilting Arts Magazine from a few years ago - one of these days I will put a tutorial on my blog :-) For this portrait I painted silk chiffon in different shades of yellow, orange and red - for the first picture I had used green batiks, definitely my favourite to work with, the next was just ordinary cottons in different yellows, but the effect you can achieve with silk chiffon had fascinated me since I went to Jeanette De Nicholis Meyer's workshop back in February. For stabiliser (and for the backing) I used the cotton drop cloth from painting the silk, in a light orange it added colour to the whole piece. I batted it with a leftover piece of cotton-bamboo batting so together with the silks this very much resembles the character of my very soft and cuddly middle DS! The silk layers are fused with Mystifuse, I raw-edge appliqued in an orangey red and in the background quilted random wiggles trying to resemble clouds (as he is my little daydreamer :-) Instead of putting it into a frame as with the others I bound it and added a hanging sleeve (note to self: For future wall hangings, remember to hem the sides of the sleeve before attaching it or you have to hem it by hand again...)

These three portraits will probably go up on the bedroom wall (oldest DS is too embarrassed to have me display him in a more public area lol). Finish #14!