Last week I introduced the subject of working in a particular sequence when creating your fabric collage quilt. Today I get more specific by talking about working in sequence when creating the human face—but also applies to other faces such as dogs, cats, or elephants. Moving from nose to eyes to mouth can help you avoid common complications, such as fabric from one part of your image overlapping the design lines of another.
Can features be done in a different order? Of course. But forewarned is forearmed, as they say. I hope this little bit of hard-earned wisdom benefits you.
Here are the links to the Fabric Collage Summer Special posts in this series so far.
Susan Carlson Fabric Collage Throwback Thursday Summer Special—1 of 14: Choosing a Photo
Susan Carlson Fabric Collage Throwback Thursday Summer Special—5 of 14: Creating a Fabric Palette
Susan Carlson Fabric Collage Throwback Thursday Summer Special—6 of 14: Sequence
Susan Carlson Fabric Collage Throwback Thursday Summer Special—7 of 14: Sequence in Portraits
To dive a bit deeper, the information in this series has been gathered, reorganized and expanded upon in our online learning resource the Fabric Collage Master Class. For more information about the Master Class, click the button below.
Sequence in Fabric Collage Part 2: Faces
(Originally Posted February 20, 2021)
One of the many topics I could address as far as sequence in fabric collage goes, is faces. Where do you start? What comes next? What do you leave until the end?
First, it’s important to be able to look at a face and understand how it’s shaped. In a recent blog post, “The Topography of the Fabric Collage Face”, I talked about how you can view the face as a landscape with ridges, valleys, and plains. If you keep that in mind, what I say next may make more sense.
In general, with any subject, I want you to start with what’s in front. Asking yourself, “What’s on top?” is one way of addressing the subject. In the case of a person’s face, what’s in front, or on top, is the nose. So, start with the nose.
1. Nose
But why? Why start with the nose?
There’s a couple reasons. The first has to do with your pattern and with the nature of fabric collage: one piece of fabric overlaps another. One shape of fabric gets trimmed to the line you’ve drawn on your pattern (such as the nostrils and point of the nose). The next fabric shapes get tucked under those trimmed-to-shape pieces (such as the future shadows under the nose).
So when you start with the nose, you’re using the pattern lines to their best advantage by knowing exactly where and what you need to trim away. One way of thinking of it is, you want to keep as much of your pattern visible for as long as possible. I mean, you spent effort making the pattern—don’t cover it up right away by starting with the shadows under the nose, or worse, “blocking in” the entire face with larger pieces of fabric. You can’t use your pattern as a guide if you cover it up right away.
The other reason I say to start with the nose is that it’s simpler than the eyes or mouth—a good warm-up as you progress through the face. It also leads you to spread your fabric shapes directly down from the ridge of the nose and into the cheeks, and upward into the forehead. In the process, you’re going to be working with color values—the lights and darks of your fabrics—and patterns they contain that could work for facial contours. It’s all about acclimating your eyes and mind to what you’re looking for in order to create the face.
2. Eyes
As your fabric shapes start to spread out from the nose, try not to cover up the lines for the eyes in the process, ’cause the eyes come next.
But now, where do you start with the eyes? Do you block in the entire eye and work inward toward the pupil? No. Start with the iris, the colored part of the eye, maybe even cut that circle to include a darker center for a ready-made the pupil. In the photo above, I found designs in my fabrics that had curves and pattern that fit the eyelid curves, and gave the eyes lashes at the same time.
Note: depending on how accurate I need to be with a face, as in, is this someone I know or not, I create eyes in different ways, even different sequences. For a more advanced layering sequence demonstration, check out this “Eye for an Eye” post.
For this generalized face, which is honestly, much more freeing and fun to make, I expanded outward from the iris into the whites of the eye. The triangular shadowed whites get tucked under the iris and lids, having already used the drawn lines for the size of the iris and the curves of the lids. See how that “what’s in front,” “what’s on top,” sequence works for eye construction as well?
3. Mouth
After the eyes, I move on to the mouth.
Typically, I’ll start with the upper lip, it is “on top of” the lower lip, after all. I almost always use more than one piece of fabric to give the lips more interest and form, moving from the brighter side of the face to the darker side. Trim the upper lip line straight where it meets the lower lip. Then slip the lower lip fabrics underneath. Once those pieces are tacked together and in place with a little glue, the surrounding face fabrics can be slipped under the mouth unit. Sequence.
And so forth
Once I’ve completed the first draft (add more details later) of the major features, I fill in the rest of the face: finish the cheeks, chin, forehead, ears, and so on. Everything spreads out from the the central features, so the order really doesn’t matter.
Trimming to the defining lines of facial features and then the outside of the face, is very satisfying and calms down the chaos of all those bits of fabrics. To create a definitive jaw line, trim to the line like I did above. The neck fabrics will slip underneath, as in photo below.
Where hair falls in a portrait sequence will vary case by case. If there’s bangs that need to be just so, I’ll do them before completing the forehead and then the forehead fabrics will go under the bangs. But with this portrait, I left my options open. I’m going to see what I find in my fabric stash—what inspires me—for the last part in this particular example of sequence in fabric collage.
There will be more subjects and more posts about sequence to come, but no promises as to when.
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Fabric Collage Online Master Class—Updated
The Susan Carlson Fabric Collage Online Master Class Manual is a multi-media resource guide to the process of fabric collage. Using video, photos, text, and links to my blog posts for further relevant reading and information, I take you from beginning to end in creating your own fabric collage masterpiece, following my guidelines in a step-by-step format. Lifetime Access. Suitable for all levels, including beginners.
Read all about the process of creating the Master Class—explanation of its genesis—the whys and hows Tom and I made some of the decisions we did in this post: Online Master Class Now Available: Some Reflections.
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Further Susan Carlson Learning Resources include: Facial Features eWorkshop, website, Serendipity Quilts, patterns, blog (in general), YouTube videos, Sea Turtle eWorkshop, Fabric Collage Online Master Class, Patreon. , and our February Fantastical Fish and Summertime’s Fascinating Bugs and Butterfly Work-Alongs
Susan Carlson Fabric Collage: Fantastical Fish eWorkshop I
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Read all about the Sea Turtle eWorkshop in this blog post: Fabric Collage Sea Turtle eWorkshop Launch.
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The Facial Features eWorkshop contains 8 videos and over 8 hours of in-depth instruction for creating each feature of a portrait in fabric. The videos are annotated with “Jump Points” allowing you to scan forward and backward to the information you need. Facial features PDF templates are included as reference and basic designs to work along with. Like the Fabric Collage Online Master Class, membership in this eWorkshop is for life.
Book: Serendipity Quilts—Cutting Loose Fabric Collage
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