Tag Archives: fiber art

Finally, Finished Fusing

Yes, Finally, all of the body pieces are working together and creating the depth of field that I’m looking for. With the face in place, I add some hair.

Helmet Hair

Yuck, that hair looks a bit too much like a helmet, but I’ll fix that when the background is in place. I rehearsed several fabrics for the background and settled on a piece that I made a few years ago in a dye/print/paint surface design class that I took with Susan Brooks in Louisville, CO.

Periodically, I take a class that is out of my comfort zone, just to learn some new things and get a fresh perspective. That was Susan’s class. I came home with lots of interesting pieces of fabric with no idea what would ever come of them.

Dye class fabrics

more dye fabrics

How happy am I to find the perfect background in that stash of “experimental” fabrics.

Background ini place

Now, back to that hair….

This is better. Phase 1: Fusing is complete.

Keep Your Eyes Where They Belong…and nose and mouth

Use Calipers to position facial features.

Finally, I’ve posted a new video on my YouTube channel

This latest video is Golden Mean Calipers Part 4 where I share how to find the optimum position of eyes, nose, and mouth in a portrait quilt.

There will be new video coming each month on how to use my calipers and other design tools. Subscribe to my You Tube Channel: Lea McComas Fiber Art to follow along.

Body Work

I’ve reached a place with my latest piece where I need to finalize a color scheme before moving on. So far, I’ve only chosen fabrics for the flesh. As I put these various body parts together, I’ve got to fill in the other elements of the composition (ie. dress, phone, background, hair.) I use my Itten Color Star to work this out.

Color Scheme

This Color Star is my favorite color wheel for making these kinds of decisions. It comes with a full set of templates that let me block out colors I don’t want to use and let’s me get a better sense of what colors I will be incorporating.

The hair is going to include yellow and yellow-oranges, while the phone will be blue-green, and her dress will be blue.

No decisions on the background yet, I’m going to put the figure all together and let it talk to me (or perhaps text me).

This week I’m able to complete the body along with the hand holding the phone. I’ve dipped into my special stash for the phone. It is made from some hand marbled fabrics I picked up in Venice back in the 90’s.

A body to go with the hands

Placing the face with the body, I have a real sense of progress. I’m not sure about the darkness of the upper body, but I’m going to move forward. I’ll audition some background fabrics before I decide whether or not to replace the body with lighter values.

A face with the body

Talk to the Hand

The fusing has begun. This week I was able to put together the hand for “We Don’t Talk”. It is created from warm red-orange flesh tones that I hope will pop off the surface and give it a real “in your face” feeling. For greater realism, I’m working with 7, rather than my standard 5 values.

The hand

Next, the face emerges from those cooler red-violet fabrics. You can begin to see that there is a significant contrast in the temperature of these 2 features. I hope it works as planned.

The face

I’m liking the detail in the eyes and mouth.

Next week I hope to fuse the body and put the pieces together.

A New Beginning

After 8 months of buying a new home, selling an old home, packing, unpacking, FINALLY, it’s time to be back in the studio. For my next piece, I’m taking another break from the historical series I’ve been working on. This next piece addresses a contemporary social issue.

Waiting for a table

I’ve long been uncomfortable with a shift in communication that takes us away from face to face contact, replacing it with texting. Several years ago, I took this photo outside a restaurant, intending to use it for a piece titled “We Don’t Talk Anymore.”

In my day job, teaching high schoolers, I set aside a period of time each week for “Community Building” where we engage in an activity, purely for fun, that requires us to talk with each other. At the start of this school year, I’m aware of how uncomfortable this is for many of my new students. This is the inspiration for a new project.

Photo of Maya

Instead of the original photo, I’m working from photos I took of my step-daughter, Maya. In the interest of full disclosure, she posed for these photos. They were not candid shots. If she has actually done this to anyone, it hasn’t been me.

With the photo cropped, edited, and printed to size, fabric selection is next. Usually, I choose a set of flesh toned fabrics for each person in my compositions so that they have individual complexions. In this case, with this bold close up of Maya, I’m going to need to establish 3 sets of fabrics just for her. I want to establish her body on 3 different planes: hand in front, face in mid-ground, and upper body in background and in shadow. I’m hoping, by doing this, to pop the hand forward and give real depth and dimension to this piece.

I start by choosing fabrics for the face. It’s in the mid ground so I choose pinkish, red-violet fabrics. For the hand, I choose warmer fabrics in the red-orange range to make them feel closer. Finally, the main body is in cooler, violet fabrics. The cooler temps of these fabrics will push them back. The tricky part will be the arm that transitions from the hand to the body.

Check in next week to see this piece coming together.

Puppy Love, Part 2

Oh joy!!! I’ve finished something in less than a month; 2 1/2 weeks actually. It’s such a thrill to jump into a project and just breeze through to the end. With this piece, I took a break from thread painting and just did some dense stitching. The new challenge was to establish some designs that would fit with each element of the composition.

The blonde hair of the girl was easy. I used various values of yellow threads in long, undulated lines of stitching.

Next, similar, but shorter, wavy lines were put down with some variegated threads in a pattern that alluded to the hair of the dog. Several times I had to stop and pet my dear Coco’s face in order to really understand the changing direction of her hair. She didn’t mind too much.

Stitching the face was a leap of faith. It is so tricky to stitch the face! If you try to recreate the actual contours, and the lines aren’t just right, it throws off the perceived shape and makes the face look distorted. I decided to go in a completely new direction: loop-d-loops. I covered the entire face in a small repetitive design that had nothing to do with its shape or contour. I still varied the threads, letting the values do the work. I’m really pleased with the results.

The background was the most troublesome decision, just as with choosing the fabric. The print was complex and busy. Afraid that it would become too strong and overpower other elements, I didn’t want to stitch the printed design. I came up with a wandering ribbon design with a tiny meandering stitch to fill in the spaces. I feel like the 2 patterns of the fabric and stitching sort of neutralize each other and take away their power to dominate.

Finally, here’s the finished piece.

Fused Applique Portrait Class

My Fused Applique Portrait class at CraftU begins March 7. There is still time to sign up. Here’s a link if you are interested:

Fused Raw-Edge Applique Portraits

https://www.craftonlineuniversity.com/courses/fused-raw-edge-applique-portraits

Here are some samples of portraits done with this technique:

Is Your Face in the Right Place?

I’ve just finished a new piece titled “Simple Pleasures”. It features a young boy named Indigo who is celebrating his 6th birthday and is thrilled with his new plastic horse. How wonderful to find such pleasure in something that has no bells, whistles, screens, login, or even batteries.

In this weeks video, I show you how to check the size, location, and dimensions of facial features so that the face looks realistic and well proportioned.

Golden Mean Calipers Pt 3: Facial Features

This piece was a chance for me to try a bolder color scheme. I like the energy and vibrancy of it. Below are process photos to show how the piece came together.

Face and Hands

Shirt and shorts

Horse in Hands

Thread-painted face

Finished piece

See Me on The Quilt Show

I recently taped an episode of TheQuiltShow.com with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. Subscribers to that website got to see that episode last week. Many thanks to those of you that sent kind words through email and Facebook.

Photo by Gregory Case

Now, I can share a link to that show with the rest of you. Click on the link here and you can watch too.

“Watch The Show”

This link will work until May 11, so make a cup of tea and sit back to enjoy.

Let me know what you think Also, for those of you that subscribe to The Quilt Show, I have a new series of lessons in the “Classroom” section of the website. This course is on “Contemporary Batik” If you’ve ever wanted to try batik, but were afraid of the mess, check out this class. It will be FUN, and EASY!! http://thequiltshow.com/learn/classrooms FTI: you have to be a subscriber to the website to access this class.

Embracing Limitations

I shake. Most notably, my hands shake. Some days are worse than others. I have a condition called “Essential Tremor”. The diagnosis came back in the 90’s and after trying a couple of medications with side effects that were worse than the condition, I’ve resigned myself to live with it.

My photo of nephew Jake at his commissioning ceremony.

The condition has been both a curse and a blessing in my art. The tremor makes it difficult for me to take good photos. I have a new camera that has an anti-shake feature, but some days, it’s just not enough. I like to work from my own photos so that I don’t have to worry about copyright issues, but am finding that increasingly difficult. This is a contributing factor to my working from historical photos.

stitching oops!

Another reality is that I have difficulty sewing a straight line when stitching with my longarm machine. If you ever see my work on a traditional quilt design, you would not be impressed. The up side is that it led me to thread painting. My style of free-motion stitching doesn’t rely on the same kind of precision. When it is necessary to be precise with details, I must slow down. Sometimes, I make one stitch at a time: needle up, needle down, needle up, needle down. Sometimes, I despair, wondering what will happen to my art if and when the conditions becomes worse.

I just found an inspiring TED talk by an artist with a similar condition. It applies to anyone on a creative journey and I want to share it with you. Phil Hansen TED talk

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