machine embroidery | Marcia's Quilting Place

For some time now, portrait quilts have intrigued me. After studying them, listening to You Tube tutorials, reading and imagining, I finally jumped in and gave it a try last week. There are as many styles and techniques as there are quilters, as we all know, so I kept reminding myself that there is no wrong or right when it comes to quilting.

I started with a selfie, posted by my son, as selfies already have a nice low number of megapixels, making it easily simplified, and because the distortion makes me smile. This was to be a trial piece and I anticipated it would go in a scrap pile somewhere when finished. It really surprised me, therefore, when I actually started to really like it. Many authors have mentioned that, with art quilting, you need to feel free to just go where the quilt takes you, and that it will often take it’s own direction. Initially it was to be just the isolated head of my granddaughter, but as that neared completion, the distortion of the selfie begged to be explained, so the cell phone border was added, complete with hand embroidered icons and a sparkly “screen”. The title then went from “A Selfie for Grandma”, to “Facetime with Gemma”.

The simplified process was as follows:

1. Using a photo editor, the head was isolated and simplified using a poster app.

2. The result was printed in gray scale and I then traced around each piece I was seeing, using parchment. By cutting the parchment pieces apart, you have a pattern.

3. At this point you need to consider the process you plan to use. If doing hand applique you need to add 1/4 inch all around each piece, but I planned to bond and machine applique, Bonding is applied to each fabric you plan to use, then the pieces are cut out. (I traced onto the bond paper, so had to place my pattern face down as well.)

4. The face on mine was treated as a base, with the smaller pieces ironed on. Then the whole face was bonded to the background fabric. I stitched close to all the edges before making a quilt sandwich, and used hand and machine embroidery on the eyes, eyebrows and eyelashes. The rest of the quilting and machine embroidery were done after layering the quilt sandwich.

If you wish more detail on any of the steps, feel free to contact me through the comments. I am always ready to talk about quilting.

The second project completed while passing the winter in South Carolina, is the above quilt, inspired by the shaker tune, “Simple Gifts”, as well as by the fabric seen below.

“Simple Gifts”

‘Tis a gift to be simple,

‘Tis a gift to be free,

‘Tis a gift to come down where you ought to be.

And when you find yourself in a place just right,

’twill be in the valley of love and delight.

The quilt top was pieced very randomly, to demonstrate the concepts of freedom and joyfulness, using this fabric with coordinating solids. I chose to call it “Simple Gifts from the Valley of Delight”.

After completing the top, some machine embroidery was added, to delineate fantasy flowers, and to add a different “gift” word to each of the print squares. I wished the appearance of the words to be subtle, so that the viewer would have to seek them out, much as in life, we need to be watching for the presence of these gifts in order to recognize them when they occur. Below is a close-up of one of the squares, that shows the word “joy”.

Finally, the quilt sandwich was built, and I had the pleasure of adding the free-motion quilting, This was a fun quilt, Put together in recognition of the generosity of a brand new friend, who seems to always put the needs of others before her own, and who told me to use whatever colors inspired me, as there is no color which would not be welcome in her home.

Marcia's Quilting Place

Tag Archives: machine embroidery

Discovering Portrait Quilting

A “Simple” Quilted Wall-Hanging

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