In Progress Part 1: The Third Fabric Collage Portrait of My Son Sam

Earlier this month, in my “Inspiration” post, I shared the beginnings of a collage quilt of Sam I’ve recently begun. The photo above is an earth detail from the background of that quilt in-progress, and this will be the first part of its quilt story. In the Throwback Thursday post from two days ago, I shared links to the Quilt Stories of two other quilts I’ve created of Sam, photos below. Multiple portraits of Sam is not something I had planned to do, it just happened.

Twenty years ago, when he was three years old, I happened to get a fun photo of Sam pretending to be a T-Rex. A few months later when I was in need of some fresh inspiration as well as a need to “let go,” that photo came back to mind and the resulting collage led me to eventually write my second book, “Serendipity Quilts.”

Then, ten years ago Sam was into the Beatles and loved his long hair (it was lovely hair and I was envious). A friend gave him a pair of round plastic sunglasses and I happened to get a photo of him trying them on. It wasn’t hard to bring John Lennon to mind. Next thing you know, I was inspired to create a second portrait of Sam

The coincidence of these two portraits ten years apart in age was noted and now I have a plan to create a collage portrait of Sam every ten years. While waiting for him to turn 23 this April 2020, fabric was collected over those years. An image however, was not in mind, so I’ve been picking up star and music themed fabrics in my travels, with the thought that they might be appropriate.

Star fabrics because his initials, STA (he has Tom’s last name), when said aloud sound like the word “star” when pronounced with a New England accent (like the word “car” pronounced as “cah”). Anyway, kinda silly, but we live in New England and it works when your kid is little and you sing him “Twinkle Twinkle Little STA” at bedtime. So the star fabric idea carried over into possibilities for his future portraits.

I began collecting music themed fabric as Sam made his way through chorus and musicals in high school and then college as a musical theater major. After Sam graduated last year, and leading up to his 23rd birthday, I’ve been waiting for a photo or idea to happen my way again and inspire his third portrait.

As we all know, the year 2020 has not turned out as planned. Not too long ago, I still didn’t have an idea for Sam’s next portrait, but I certainly wasn’t going to have time to even get started on it. Or so I thought. But now I’m home, and Sam’s home, and the creative spark for this new quilt turned out to be refrigerator poetry magnets. Who knew? You’ll have to read the post I mentioned earlier to get the full story, but here’s a paragraph relevant to this quilt story post:

So on my second Monday of play-time, I was back in front of the blank foundation fabrics with my morning coffee. The word “succulent” [from the fridge magnets] reminded me I had some succulent plants themed fabrics that I had bought for my son Sam, who likes succulent houseplants” (where did I put those fabrics?”). One thought—and fabric—led to another and the next thing I knew I was still going to do a moon, but the face would be Sam’s, in blues. By noon I had Sam posing for me, but I didn’t tell him exactly why.

Inspiration sometimes hits suddenly and unexpectedly. I’ve been happy to be able to run with it the last few weeks. And yes, the star (some are pictured below, guarded by Djinni Cat) and music fabrics have been put into play. The star fabrics especially worked well for Sam’s moon-face. I wasn’t sure at first what Sam’s reaction would be seeing himself rendered a blue crescent moon. But right away he seemed pleased and amused at the idea, probably somewhat relieved that I wasn’t going in an even stranger direction.

In the process of being inspired to begin Sam’s portrait, I also decided to design a series of Thursday Night in My Studio Live! presentations to follow along with me. Those familiar with the resulting videos Tom and I created, will recognize the following photos that I used in those slide shows. As I said in the series about creating faces, “start with the nose.” And that’s exactly what I did for Sam.

But first, I cut down some of the collected fabrics into hand-sized shapes to be able to easily twist and turn them to see where they may fit on the portrait—see fabric palette photos above. In the photos below, I saw the curve of a nostril flare in the marbleized pattern of a Tula Pink print. I really wanted to get the unicorn and sea serpent into the portrait as well, but that had to come later.

Any of these photos can be seen larger by clicking on the image.

Next come the eyes. My idea for Sam’s blue moon was that he was dreaming. So I had him close his eyes for one of the photos I took, and that’s what I ended up using. Therefore, his eyes are pretty simple, at least so far. Below, you can see the fabric I found for his eyelid. I was looking for a printed design that had that outward curve that a closed lid has. His eyelashes were cut from a printed fern frond from a fabric I collected while on a family trip to New Zealand in 2007.

Then do the mouth. So far, Sam’s mouth is created with two leaves—with a bit of sea-serpent making up the dimple of his smile line. Eventually, more will be added. But getting started, I first need to think about covering the foundation fabric, using my drawn design as accurately as I can before I obscure it with all the bits of fabric. Covering the foundation fabric I consider the “first draft.” As long as I have a good base to build on, I can (and will) add more and more to the second and third drafts.

As I worked on Sam’s facial features, I also found, cut, arranged, and pinned fabrics to create the rest of his face. Light greens as well as aqua blues became the go-to lighter values for the bridge of his nose and cheek. At 23 years old, he has a beard and moustache, so I looked for fabric colors and visual textures to portray that change of facial texture.

Eventually, I moved far enough from the edge of his profile to tackle his ear (with the unicorn temporarily nestled nearby). My thought on ears is that you need to include them, but you don’t want to call attention to them—the other facial features are more important. But then I found a fabric with interesting curves, though certainly calling attention to itself with it’s bold and graphic nature.

Nothing tried, nothing gained. After three tries (above and below)—getting in my opinion scarier and scarier—it’s sometimes best to start from scratch. I had already glued some of the pieces down, but what doesn’t easily pull up can be coaxed with a dab of water on the water-soluble glue.

I’m reserving final judgement on the ear—it’s a first draft after all, below. At least it’s the right size, in the right spot, and it’s not overwhelming everything else going on. Good for now.

 

As I was working in the ear area, I was also adding to his hair. Didn’t know the moon had hair, did you? Well, for this portrait story, getting a few flowing locks in place would be relevant. Because of the closing of hair salons due to COVID-19, Sam’s hair reached a length we hadn’t seen for most of the last decade and he was constantly flipping it out of his face. Not wanting to wait until he felt comfortable in close proximity to others in closed spaces, he got so desperate that he asked if I’d give haircutting a try—”you’re pretty good with scissors,” he said. Two hours later, between electric clippers, hair scissors, and a YouTube video, Sam now has a decent enough haircut.

But the photo I’m working from is still the longer hair version, taken just a couple days before his corona-era 23rd birthday. It’ll be a time we’ll remember. Besides, Sam got a kick that some of his hair was created with curved bars of music—music composition being one of his interests.

By the time the four-week face series of Thursday Night in My Studio Live! presentations was wrapped up, Sam’s portrait was ready to progress to the background. I had decided to re-orient the curve of the crescent moon, making the face itself less reclined. So this was the time to adjust it on my pinning board (above) and patch in the corners of the foundation fabric, getting it ready for more collaging.

I’ve scheduled two weeks of time off between series to get some of my own work done and, in turn, use it as demonstration material for the next series of Thursday Night presentations. So in keeping with that idea, the next four Thursdays are all about backgrounds. (See my website for information on signing up for the live presentations or to purchase the later recordings—www.susancarlson.com—and scroll down.)

Backgrounds can completely stall a project, catching you off guard and frustrating you. You’re on a roll and then basically, you have to start all over again in a new area. But I was prepared. I had talked the quilt “story” out with Sam—an earth, full of possibilities, within reach of his moon. He loved the map-themed fabric for the earth. Sam had participated in the National GeoBee a couple times in his elementary school career, so a few geographic fabrics had made it into my “Sam Stash,” see below.

As always, the larger pieces of fabric get cut smaller to be able to move them around until they find a place to get trimmed and pinned. Along the way, I added some light blue and green topographical map print shapes to the mix and odd shaped oceans and continents started to form. My earth does not conform to the real globe of earth, but it works. I picked and chose to highlight locations that Sam had either visited or descended from, though all continents (except Antarctica) are represented.

Every few days, Sam comes into the studio to check on my progress. He approved the earth, though was wondering about adding more ocean blues. I can do that, I said. Before I stopped for the evening, I had added swirls of blue, though I was thinking more about wind and atmosphere (below left). The next morning, those pieces looked a little too active, like the earth was hurtling toward my moon child. So they got redistributed and both Sam and I were satisfied with the result (below right).

This occupied me for my first week off between Thursday Night series: cutting, arranging, pinning, pinning some more, and then more. Running out of pins is not necessarily a good thing. It means I got on a roll, but also means I’ve built up a lot of fabric layers—one upon the other—and getting underneath to glue could be a problem with my specifically placed bits of details.

Here’s how to handle something like that: don’t try to get to what’s underneath until you glue what’s on top down first. In the photo above, I’ve glued those very light colored musical fabric pieces to the map fabric underneath them before I lift the group to glue them onto the foundation fabric, in photo below.

By the way, that underneath map fabric (with its interesting placement of North America next to Oceania) was the only fabric I had that included New Zealand—you can just make it out at the bottom of the photo above—a “must include” location for Sam’s story, and a somewhat magical trip for the three of us.

More pinning and gluing after I found more musical themed fabric to add—including the words “Waltz,” “Allegro,” and “Overture,” that Sam picked out.

Aside from needing to finish the top of the moon, the first draft of both heavenly beings are now done, with a few extra second draft details already added to the earth.

Time for the remaining background, which I was planning to be the universe. Out comes a selection of “universe” fabrics, below left. The first fabric I placed was a fabric I love with spheres/planets with bars of music printed over them. On the home stretch, I thought.

The dark blue, black, and green universe fabrics did not play well with the moon blues, so back to my fabric wall for “sky” fabrics, below right. Maybe a sunset was the way to go?

I gave myself a few hours to throw and pin fabric at it, below, but nothing clicked for me. The Muse was taking a break.

Just like when I was doing Sam’s ear, I pulled everything off the sky area and got back to square one and back to the story. I was thinking “Music of the Universe,” so I started cutting lilting and swirling curved shapes from select music fabrics—selected to contrast in color and value with both moon and earth—more pinning.

I’m not too crazy about the result—I like the swirling music, but not in relation to the moon and earth—contrast is definitely an issue. I rarely admit that that any collage is “too much,” but I think this may be a case for that. It kept me occupied for a couple more days, and I ran out of pins again.

Then I took the photo below and showed it to Sam. His dark eyebrows went up in surprise and he said something like, “Whoa,” followed by a quiet, “I kinda liked the idea of planets…”

So, it’ll be back to the pinning board…

My goal for this past week was to have the first draft of this portrait with background, done for this blog post. Instead, it’s a continuing story of the search for a background. A fitting lead-in to next Thursday’s studio presentation—backgrounds really can thwart you. I guess that’ll be part of this quilt’s story too.