Signora - a few minutes here and there

Signora - quiet escape from the rush

Even though Christmas is still a week away I needed a break from the shopping and cooking.
I sat with this lady and started bringing her to life. It's really quit intimidating as I've never tried this style before.

But now all is set up and materials gathered so I can just 'check out' of the hubbub with a few quiet moments of stitching.

Time out to slip in a Christmas Gift

I found this complete kit a my guilt's Christmas garage sale meeting.
Perfect for a first Christmas gift for my son's lovely girlfriend.
I used a light Polar fleece for the backing/batting. It's very soft and cuddly.

The Garden - Confetti woes

I had just about finished pinning the first portion when I ran out of pins.
In retrospect it was a good thing.
I had the rest of the day sidetracked by other things and when I finally got back to the piece (with a new box of pins) I realized I wasn't happy with the presentation.

The sky was purple, mauve, what ever you want to call it but it sure wasn't blue. The other colours   brought out the purple that I really hadn't noticed up till then.

Replace it? Impossible.
Conceal it? Difficult.
Alter the visual with more blue. Very Doable.
I spent an hour taking out all the pins and carefully rolling back the tulle.
My scrap bag reveal enough multicolored soft shades to fill the remaining empty field.
Much better.

Now I can go back to repining

And THIS is how I pin.

I try to put most of the pins between the confetti pieces.
Why so many?
There is a lot of vibration in the material as you sew. The object is to tame the movement.

The Garden

I'm setting my Signora aside for a bit. I decided NOT to machine quilt the face but to hand stitch it. To do that I need to restock my thread and it will be awhile before I venture out to the store.

IN THE MEANTIME

I had fallen for a Klimt picture.
It played on my weakness for Confetti or Crumb work. I had put those techniques aside for the summer...but

As I watched the snow fall this morning I decided I could use a colour boost and caved.

What's not to love about this glowing work.

 I wanted a large mix so I limited the size of the materials

And the colours dance across the background of this piece already.

Signora - Day 4

There were a few adjustments needed, some lifting and trimming of the hairline, but most of the day was spent adding some colour and contrast to the flesh.
I tried a few things, paint sticks, ink pencils but I ended with Tea, Earl grey to be precise.
The remaining character lines can be thread.

Signora - Scarf and facial features

Everything is placed and fused and the scarf has all the stitching it needs to maintain the folds as well as keep some texture.

Marking that seasoned flesh was crucial and I'll admit a kind of 'hold your breath' scary.
The face, fingers and arms have the basic lines.....the major sags and folds are lightly marked with a permanent F&P brown quilt label pen. They don't show up at there best here but they are clear enough for me to work with.

Time to add the backing.

Vecchia Signora tra le Viti

This image is another one of those that have haunted me for a long time. My original thoughts were to use the collage process but I couldn't massage it in Photoshop to my liking, or I'm still not wholly comfortable with the process. So my default method is raw applique.

Enlarging it and then tracing a cartoon and a second copy on fusible materials worked very well for the face and arms, but the head scarf was another matter.

For this I cut individual strips on the bias from a light weight poly knit. There is no distinct pattern but I hoped that there was enough interest in the design to give it some lift and texture.

 I fused a sharp fold in the material where it surrounds the face. For now the rest is pinned.
I'm sure I"m going to play with the folds for a while.