Sam's Moon Portrait: Adding Sheers in the Final Draft

[Music] hi this is susan carlson and welcome to my studio and i would like to show you something i've been working on and this is a portrait of my son sam as a crescent moon so i am in the third or final draft that i would call and i'm adding lots of little details and those details i'm having a lot of fun adding them with sheer fabrics so i want to show you a little bit of what i mean by sheer fabrics how i work with them and how i glue them to add extra detail and extra value and form to sam's face and also to the earth behind in the background the earth started with its layer of background cotton fabrics so i used a lot of map fabrics and there's also musical notes you can read the blog to see why all those things are in there but i have added sheer fabrics on top so you see like that curve right there of blue with the polka dots that is this fabric right here so i'm using fabrics when i say sheer fabrics i'm not it's not just like tulle and fine fabrics like you see right there it's also maybe somewhat translucent fabrics this would be more like an organza with a textured polka dot on top of it there is also fabrics like this i would call this maybe like a printed chiffon so you can see that you can see through it but it is somewhat opaque certainly much more opaque than i would want it with all the work that i've put on with that base layer but when i cut around these curves and flowing lines i can place them if you look right up here here's one of those curves right here going into like a spiral this is it just pinned see i pin these now every place you see pins is something that still needs to be glued so there it is pinned in place and it has a little more opacity to it when it's just pinned when i glue it down see here now i'm going into an area that i've glued you can it's tight up against my base fabric and you can see a little bit more through it so it's adding like this atmosphere of swirls on top of my base fabric and that is that final draft that i'm adding detail to and the one other thing i want to show you with this because it was a really fun find of mine this is another um printed organza and it has kind of like a again it's textured it's like a little bit of a glitter glue sort of thing and you know by itself it's very opaque but then when i cut and kind of fussy cut around those lines i can then glue them on top and it adds this really wonderful kind of highlight of curves and swirls like there's air currents moving or clouds you know in front of the earth making it a little more atmospheric on sam's face i needed to do quite a bit of fine tuning and part of it was to bring out some of the highlight along his nose to really separate it from the background universe and i needed to lighten it so what i did was add some lace first and then some silver glittered netting second so let me show you what that lace looked like it was this right here so this is it's actually fabric from my mom's stash and she's 88 years old now so it's been around for a while and look how cool that is that blue has a couple different shades to it so it's too hard to see how it's going to work when it's all floral looking so what i do is i cut it into smaller pieces so here you have a hand sized piece i tell people to make a palette of like hand sized shape it includes some lighter flowers it includes some of those slightly darker leaves and then i can move it around and decide where it's going to look good so let me pull just this a couple layers off here i've have multiple layers of some of this the sheer fabric happening so here you can see a band of this enough is exactly like that something like that see there's that that rose right there and there it is there so i cut it out and added it to lighten his cheek area kind of the value-wise so it looks like it's coming out towards us but it also blends some of the fabric that's underneath so it creates a merging of one fabric into another fabric and then i also added a little bit of a silver netting so there's that right there you can kind of see that so silver netting that's on top of the the blue but it adds kind of it kind of adds a little more texture to a more plain and open area on his cheek and when i looked at it after that i was very happy with all that happening but i decided i wanted to add a little more warmth to his face because this is all very cool colors so that's where this fabric it's just like the the silver but it's gold i cut that in a kind of a chunk of fabric and decided where i wanted it to go and that now i will glue down on top of this in this area so it adds yet another value change color change it's a little more warmer looking cooler looking here so all of that just kind of starts blending together and making a really cool effect so as we move up in his face i just want to show a couple things that i added as well on his eyes i was doing some fine tuning on his eyes so there's a little bit of this fabric so i had you know again these are all different types of sheer translucent fabrics you know you look at that and you're like i don't know if i could use that in fabric collage but yeah you can i use this a little bit as a coloring underneath his eyelid and then i took this lovely lovely netting some more flowers and roses and stuff and just cut a little kind of curve of it probably came from somewhere like see like that area right in there i cut those things out and then i can maneuver it into there to add kind of a line it's not like a really heavy fabric line unless like it's not like i'm outlining it blends a little better and then i needed just a touch of shadow right there so back into my mom's stash and i found this kind of purpley gray which added a nice little shadowy area right up in here so i'm pretty happy with what's happening in there that takes a bit of time to maneuver but it's really fun and it's worth it i want to show you a little bit of gluing right up here on this forehead now this is another area that i'm kind of working and reworking but it's getting very um interesting as i go so let's say i'm going to pull part of this off here so this is that silver [Music] kind of netting mesh netting which is actually on top of a lime green netting see that right there which is on top of two of those the ones that i showed you right around his eye that kind of aqua and then a little more green those kind of lacy fabrics they're right there on top of those are the first layers of translucent and lacy fabrics and shears on top of the base um the base uh cotton that made his forehead i needed to lighten up that whole area is what it amounted to so i kept adding more and more stuff i liked the way this turned the blues that were in his forehead more into greens i thought it helped separate from the background blues of the universe and then i liked the way that warmed it up and then i liked the way this lightened everything up the lace is already glued down because i you know didn't know that i wasn't done yet but now i've added more things so i need to glue again and what i do is i take my glue and i just put a little smear of glue here and there i'm kind of you know just kind of dabbling it along where i'm going to need to glue it you can see it now but what i'm going to do is smear this glue and that it's held down and the pieces are held down on this this end so i don't have to worry about them shifting out of place because i've got them pinned in a couple points and see now you can't see the glue and what i'm going to do is just press down into it i do tend to use my fingernails it doesn't seem to catch the glue quite as much when i do that up here it's sticking up a little bit so i'm going to come up sorry get out of the way of the camera see then i'm kind of smearing it and i'm going to press that in place so that takes care of that it's kind of a light touch i can do more later if i need to but you know for all i know i'm going to put something on top of it anyway so that's good enough to get rid of the pins and move on with with more detail work or i can come back later and glue it a little more before it's time for for quilting so there's that one way that's kind of the basic way but sometimes like this little succulent plant right there and this starfish right there those were added on top of then the all the sparkle glitter netting that i had there so when i put something on top of it then all i need to do is glue that piece down so here now i'm going to put glue you can see i'm just putting it on the edge of this little piece of of um solid succulent cotton fabric and i'm going to press it down and that will now go through the netting and hold the netting in place onto the background and now that that's glued up there i can take these pins out of it and then i can continue with gluing i have this piece right here that hasn't been glued yet so that was added on top of everything for some extra detail because i realized i needed a little bit more light in this area it had gotten too dark again so really good thing about collage is that you can just keep adding layers and some of those layers start getting obscured but i feel like you know it's kind of like adding a like a wash of something you know on top and so a little bit of what's underneath is going to show here and there and just adds to the depth and the intricacy and the interest of whatever it is that you're doing so now see how these pieces that i've added on top of this stuff the the netting help hold it down i don't have to worry about gluing the netting right there because these pieces are holding it down and if i don't have anything like that where i can either put on top or even tuck it under then i just you know dude you know i do what i showed you before i um apply the glue smear it so you hardly see it at all but it's still tacky and then you press it down and then you back away and let it dry i've showed you some of the fabrics that i'm using up here in the earth the ones on sam's face but i need to then also balance out a little bit into the universe and also it's fun to do so here's what i've got so far there is this fabric it's a blue tool now tool t-u-l-l-e is very sheer and it's really what you mostly think about when i tell people that i'm using sheer fabrics they usually think about tulle this one happens to be studded with some silver dots here it is right here you can see you know what it looks like right there now this is a light blue so when i put it on the blue base you really don't see the blue too much it's more the sparkle which you know like stars back there if i were to put it onto the earth it um it still doesn't show up too much though it turns it a little bit more bluer i want to point that out because then you can also find light colored tool see this is very sheer and if i were to put it up on the earth you hardly see it at all but when i put it on the the blue background the blue universe it it really lightens up that area so if i were to want something to blend in more on a dark background i'm going to choose a darker base of my netting if i want something to show up and make it kind of mute it or lighten it i can use something with a lighter base to my netting then the opposite goes as far as shading or highlights on a light background and when i say background i mean i mean the the base of your collage that you're adding these sheer fabrics to and finally i just want to point out this really cool kind of translucent fabric that i have had for years and haven't found a place to use it until i got to this piece so here is the fabric so look at that you see it's kind of striated with aqua and blue and kind of a purple and a bit of a green and it's got these these swirls and flowy lines that are kind of silvery and a little bit textured so really cool stuff and when i cut it up into smaller shapes so here you can see how i've kind of cut in from one side you see i'm kind of cutting chunks out of it and here's one of those chunks right here and like i said it's a hand size shape now this has a flow to it the design itself so i'm going to cut it out with a bit of that flow i'm not going to cut it out hand sized because then i lose all that beautiful movement that's in this piece of fabric and what i did i mean i've got it here there's a little bit of it right up here poking out from underneath the moon and there's you know i have it a few places i have to add more in other words so what i'll do with this piece is i will probably spend oh anywhere from if i'm lucky i'll find just the right spot for it and i'll pin it in place just like i've pinned that one there otherwise i might be moving this around for a good half hour or something that's why some of these final final details add a lot of time to the collage but it's really worth it in the end because you know look how much interesting it is when i just add something like this that starts you know kind of hovering over the planets and and starting starts to blend one fabric you know here's one fabric and then there's this fabric and then it moves into another fabric right down here these are three fabrics very similar but they are different prints but if i start putting something like this down it starts kind of blending all of them together so these are really using sheer fabrics is a really fun way to kind of merge and blend everything and it takes time but i find that it's quite worthwhile in the end you

Channel: Susan Carlson Quilts

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Id: b76ij5Ra3Tg

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021