A Face For My Shield Of Words

It took all morning and part of the afternoon for me to figure out how to begin my new fabric painting. I was working from the drawing I did the other day and the more I tried the more I thought that maybe the pencil drawing was as far as I was going to get.

I had the idea in my mind that this piece was going to be similar in size and technique as my Twin Healing Trees fabric painting.  But I finally gave up on that idea and decided that I had to let my expectation of what I thought it would be go, and allow it to become what it wanted to be.

The size was part of the problem, but also the face.  I couldn’t get it “right”.

What worked is when I pulled one of the old quilts from the pile on top of my shelf and cut it up.   I had no idea if it was the “right” size (it wasn’t, later I sewed another piece on to one side and will sew some onto the bottom too) but just took it to my sewing machine and started to sew.

I had spent part of the morning drawing faces with marker in my sketch pad so I had a better idea of what the face should look like.

Mostly I trusted myself to be able to do it.  And it finally worked.

Next, I cut out her shield and her dress in white fabric just to get an idea of the sizes and shapes.  That done, I went back to working on her face.

I have an idea of what her dress will look like.  I keep seeing it in soft dark greens.  I’m thinking of using matte medium to create the dress, like a collage instead of sewing it.  That way it will blend together more smoothly.

I did an experiment using the same quilt as a ground and some scraps of fabric.  Tomorrow I’ll be able to see what the fabric looks like when it dries and if it makes the whole thing too stiff to work with.