You may notice that I have changed the name of the post from “Sneak Peak”. I decided that, if you have been reading this long expose, you are no longer just taking a peak, but are participating fully in the creation!!!!
At the end of the previous post, I had finished the woman’s head and was pleased with it. I then began working on the arms and hands and got them finished fairly quickly. Unfortunately (here comes the rot again), I realized that I had done them backwards (again) and I also felt that they may have been a bit too small.
SO, I left them where they were and went on to her shirt. In the pattern photo, the woman had a jacket tied around her waist and there wasn’t a lot of definition between the top and the pants. I wanted to simplify this pattern, so I went back to the photo of myself and looked at how my shirt hung below my arms. After two different attempts, I was pleased with how it looked.
I then moved onto the pants. Since I had done the arms backwards, I knew that her legs would need to cross the other direction so I planned my pattern accordingly and looked for fabric. After cutting it out, gluing the edges of the pattern and placing it on the design wall, IT LOOKED GHASTLY.
OK, no other fabric that would work, but I thought that I might get by with the back side of the ghastly fabric.
I cut out another freezer paper pattern, ironed it on the fabric, cut it out, glued the edges and then realized that I had used the wrong side of the pattern and now her legs were crossing in the original direction, which meant that her arms and hands were wrong!$!!%!!
After a bit of deliberation, I decided to re-do the arms since I really thought that they needed to be a bit bigger and I also did them in a shade darker fabric. Much better!!! By this stage, I have learned to write the word “Pattern” on the side that I need to draw from!!!
Now to the feet. The original photo had tennis shoes, but the picture, once again, didnt’ have enough detail. How was I going to photography myself (since Hubby in out of the country)? I had recently learned how to use my camera with a timer setting, so I set the camera up on a shelf, focused on the char, hit the button and raced to get myself into the proper position. The first photo was great of my crossed foot, but it didn’t get the one on the floor. After 6 or 7 attempts, I was able to get a good photo of both feet.
I printed the photo and started drawing the pattern for the shoes and suddenly realized that I DID NOT want to do anything with that much detail on them. So, I went to my closet, got out my simply black shoes and sat down at the camera again.
The legs and shoes went together without too many hitches….I only had to re-do one of the fabric choices.
So here she is………
I still dont like the pants fabric so will do some shopping today to see if I can find a solid that I like better. I also feel that she is a little to “squat” so will think about how I can elongate the legs and may take a bit off of the hips….wish it was that easy in reality!!
Last night I started working on the little girl and was interested to see how different a child’s face is to an adult face. But, more about that later.
Thanks for all of your encouragement on this project. If you cant tell, I am having a BLAST!!!!
One thought on “Train – Work in Progress – Part 5”
I have been concentrating on work and study and just seen these posts. I love the way it is progressing. It is really interesting to share in your thought processes. Thank you