Subtitle…..the saga of the little girl!!!!

As with each of the people on my train, I had to re-do MANY parts of the little girl and I am still not completely happy with her countenance, but you can help me decide that at the end of the post……

First the hair…..I was excited about doing the long flowing hair and started out with three beige/gold prints.  In the original photo,  the hair seemed to have some darker streaks running thru it, so I added a darker brown color into the mix.  After cutting out the basic hair outline in freezer paper and attaching it to a base fabric, I started adding slivers of the other fabrics to create movement.  It looked ok, but not exactly right.

As with the woman, I was afraid that I couldn’t get enough detail off of the photo that I had of the little girl,  so I asked a young friend to pose for me.  I knew that I wanted to use the original girl’s hair, but thought that I might be able to change the face out.  That, however, did not work at all…..the model’s face was simply not the right shape to go with the hair, even though I tried really hard to make it work.

I ended up making three different faces for the girl.  The first one used the new facial features and light colored fabrics …..she ended up looking like juvenile beauty queen!!   The second one used the original facial features, but with fabrics that were still too light.  My daughter said that she looked “mean”.  The final face was done with much darker fabrics and I am relatively happy with her looks.  I may still change the eye color….it seems too dark for the rest of her face.  I also decided to remove the darker brown highlights in the hair and replace them with a much more gentle brown and that made a huge difference.

Here is a picture of the “3 faces of  Eve”…  the one on the right is the final one….

I had fun with her clothes and ended up using cute pink and orange prints for both the pants and shirt.

I knew that I wanted the girl to be holding a book, so I photographed my model in that manner and used her hands for the pattern.  I had dreaded this particular part, but it went quickly and with only ONE incarnation.  The only thing that I had to change was to cut the book apart so that the angle could be changed.

Now I was down to the shoes.  As I said a few days ago, I am over doing super detailed tennis shoes so I went online looking for simple photos or drawings of shoes.  Unfortunately, the first site that I ended up on was a guy who had a shoe fetish and had pictures of himself wearing women’s shoes (100’s of different ones)!!!!  I quickly hit the “back” button to never return!!

I did find one simple shoe but it wouldn’t allow me to download a photo, so I took out a pencil and paper and drew it myself!!!!  Now, I have NEVER drawn anything before.  I have ALWAYS relied on patterns.  So, this was a wonderful revelation for me.    I went back to the original pattern for the little girl and sketched out the basic shape of her shoes and then added the detail from the shoe found online.  I was so excited!!!!

To finish the figure, I  added a bit of ric-rac to the bottom of her pants, and will see how that looks once I have done the threadwork….it may have to come off.

Anyway….here she is at the moment……

 

After I have appliqued her hair down, I am going to add a few more fusible bits to the ends to make it look even more wispy.

So, one more person  and then a LOT of attaching and finishing to go!!!

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!!!!

OK…..it has now been over two weeks since I created the young man (even though I only posted about it yesterday) and I was ready to start on the woman. She is not proven to be an easy or fast creation, but I have certainly learned a lot. But, lets start at the beginning……

Firstly, on Saturday afternoon my friend Anita arrived at my door with a bag full of hand dyes that she had made as possible flesh tone fabrics. This was in payment for some quilting that I did for her last month.

Secondly, as I looked at the pattern that I had drawn, and went back to the original photo to see the details of the picture, I realized that the photo taken from the internet was too small to be blown up to show the needed details. So, I asked my husband to take photos of me sitting in the same position as the woman in my pattern and then I used the 8 mega-pixel photo to create the pattern for her face and hands. My thought was that, when translated into fabric, you wouldn’t be able to tell who it was.

I drew the patterns out and then used my photo copier to enlarge them to an appropriate size. On to the studio……

When I started, I was planning to turn under the edges (except for the REALLY small pieces) and then use machine applique (blanket stitch with monofilament thread) to attach them. I started out by cutting the face and other needed shapes out of freezer paper. I spent some time looking at fabrics and decided which ones I would use. In the back of my mind, I remembered reading that you had to use a lot of contrast, but thought that I had picked my fabrics well.

Then the rot set in…… As I was working on the first of the face shadows, I realized that I had not used the proper side of the pattern and that the face was going in the wrong direction. So, I re-cut those pieces and started again.

I decided to go ahead and sew one of the larger shadows onto the base fabric, but really didn’t like how it looked, so I changed my mind about the type of applique and decided to fuse all of the shadings onto the background.

SO, I started again!!! This time I was really happy with the look of the face. The shadings were good and it was really looking like a face. As I quit for the evening, I put the face up on the design wall, next to the original young man and walked away.

As I turned around to turn off the light, I realized that…..1) in comparison with the young man, the face was too small, and 2) there was not enough color or contrast in the face…. when viewed from a distance it looked like a light pink blob with brown hair!!! Oh well, there was always tomorrow!!!

On Sunday afternoon, I sat down again and started working on yet another face…this time about 10% larger than the previous one. I took the darkest fabric from the original face and made it the base fabric for the new face. The first shadow that I wanted to add was the darkest one and I couldn’t find a piece of fabric that was the correct color. After thinking about it, I finally pulled out the black RIT dye again and dunked a small piece of the hand-dye to darken it.

I drew the shadow design on freezer paper, applied it to the fabric and then realized that I had, once again, used the wrong side of the pattern and the piece was backwards (By the way, this has been a recurring theme…you would think that I would learn !!!)

After re-doing the first shadow, I continued adding fabrics and getting really excited about the result. I had always been told that a face is not made up of lines, but of shadows and I can now see what they were talking about.

I think that I will stop the saga here and continue tomorrow, but here is a photo of the final face….and it really does look like me!!!