In the past year, two really cute appliqué pet portraits have crossed my path - my friend Veronika made one of her cat Oscar, and a fan of a shop cat at Warner Mountain Weavers left one for Adrienne. Naturally, when I saw a "Call for Artists" for the annual "Bad Art" fundraiser for FOAS, I signed up and decided to do appliqué pet portraits. I looked at a few videos and instructional aides, but this one on Lorraine's "Quilting in the Fog" website gave me the simplest guidance for Pet Portrait Appliqué of all of them. I printed the (sometimes cropped) photos to full 8.5 x 11" and used wax paper and sharpies to make templates.
Here are the reference photos for Noomie the border collie, Dwight the ginger tabby, and Jojo who is a good boy (so said the note on the artist dashboard):
Newmie was the easiest -- his shapes were really clearly defined. As you see on the print out of his photo to the right, I had made some notes about how to approach and define the color areas, and then just traced with waxed paper using a sharpie and cut out the templates. I pinned the waxed paper to fabric with Stitch Witchery already applied to the back side and used tiny scissors to snip it out.
He is a good boy!
Dwight was a bit trickier - I didn't feel I had enough fabrics close enough to his colors (my mac is not printing on my Brother CN3040 printer properly) but I think it worked out ok. I know Dwight personally and wanted to give him a really good portrait. Even though I was constrained by fabric selections (shockingly - I don't have a lot of beiges and browns in my stash), I used about 6 different thread colors (zoom in and you can see).
He is a good boy!
Jojo presented a different challenge: the pose and the photo were a bit tricky to translate to "flat" without him looking like, well, roadkill. I made his partly opened eye more open, added velvet to the belly and tail so he can be petted - and interpreted the words from the note "He is a good boy" so it's clear that this is a present tense Jojo!
NOTES AND TIPS:
- Stitch Witchery is the way to go; I considered using spray basting adhesive but that would have been trickier for smaller pieces.
- Use an unscented dryer sheet to clean off the sticky stuff from your iron.
- Iron - I used my small travel iron - just in case - and it was all I needed.
- Nonstick silicone cookie sheet mat worked really well to keep the Stitch Witchery webbing from sticking to my ironing pad.
- Velvet melts - lower heat and iron from the back to get the stitch witchery to stick or use spray stitching.
- Upholstery samples are great backgrounds - just make sure to soak overnight and peel the paper from the backside. I tried to sew through and broke a few needles.
- Sewing: my Singer 201 gives me the option to drop the feed dogs, which I did try with the embroidery foot but... without putting the piece in an embroidery hoop, it didn't feel right. I just did this with the feed dogs in place, a transparent acrylic quilting foot, and lots of forward/backward on the stitch direction.
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