I have written several posts about a collaboration between artists which will result in an upcoming exhibition and a coffee table type book. The original sketches that all of these are based on are by Nanci Williams who works at the store with me. We see a wide diversity of people and fashions. It’s getting closer to the deadline to have all the pieces completed and so I’ve finished one more. His name is Norman.

I started with Nanci’s sketch and on the left, you will see an attempt to thread sketch Norman without any guidelines. I could have done him that way but I just seem to get the proportions a bit off. So I decided I would try using colored pencil to trace the sketch and then use that to free motion machine stitch over. So that is the middle piece. He definitely looked better than the first attempt. So now to determine size. I increased the original sketch 180% and that is on the right side of the photo. I had some linen that I had dyed naturally and I can’t remember now what it was dyed with. (Note to self – keep better track of experiments.) I backed it with Osnaberg fabric by fusing it down to the back after I had traced the sketch with “Beige” colored pencil.

Then I free motion stitched him on the machine. Here he is after stitching. I actually really liked him without color but I was persuaded that he needed color.

So I colored him in with colored pencil. And I’m glad I did. He turned out just like I wanted.

So here’s a little closer view. Since I have one more on the list to do, I decided to make the next one with this same method.  But I didn’t have any more of the fabric. So I dyed some heavier cotton fabric with tea and coffee. I dyed more than I needed and I’m sure that was a mistake because now I want to use the rest of the fabric with three extra sketches. Because of course I have nothing better to do! So I’ll see how many I can get done before the March 1st deadline.