Portraiture

In September - October 2021, The POM Lunch and Shmooze ("L&S") had several new members who joined.  One of the "newbies" wanted to know more about the other members: what they did, who they were, etc., other than the face seen at the Zoom meeting.  A self-portrait challenge was declared.  I don't always jump at these challenges because sometimes they just don't speak to me.  Since I hadn't done any art quilting in a while, I accepted the challenge and this is what I made:

  

The face was made in two halves, not because I'm "chas v'chalilah, two faced, but as a method I used in a previous work I made, "Eshet Chayil".  I will try to borrow a copy of it from a previous blog and post it here.

The hair was cotton leftover from a fabric portrait I made of my father.  I created it during an online course.  That portrait somewhat resembled my father and the photo is at the bottom of this post.

I wear glasses and the glasses here are from pink organza - i.e. I tend to look at life through rose coloured glasses.

The lips are ruby red, for no particular reason because I never wear lipstick, red or otherwise.  If I could have redone them to show a smile, I would have been happier.  Ah, I just remembered a folk song from my youth with a line "and who will kiss your ruby lips when I am gone?" So I'm claiming it was intentional...

I am wearing earrings made from pieces of jewellery  gifted to me during my now dormant embellished crazy quilt period. 

The blouse if what's left of a beautiful embroidered blouse Menachem brought me from Europe from a folk dancing festival.

 And since I try to connect the dots leading to Judaic content, I made a "thought bubble" containing the "im ein ani li mi li" or,loosely meaning that if I am not for me (stand up for myself), then who will (stand up for me)? The bubble is printed onto fabric using a laser printer.

And the "dots" in this case are buttons, a nod to a program Gwen and I presented to the POM L&S group last year, the year before?

And here I am again, so you don't have to scroll back to the top.  I will be happy to answer any questions about my creative process or techniques used.

This is the quilt I made of of my father.  My choice of fabrics was not the best, probably because I didn't know before I took the course what the technique was.  It does however somewhat resemble him (again the mouth was problematic) but the yellow sweater was his signature comfort wear.
 

BTW, the background fabric for my self portrait is fabric  from an ottoman Menachem and I made for my parents, using clarinet pieces as the legs.  Did I mention that my father had a long and illustrious career as a clarinetist in the TSO and as a clarinet teacher?

The background fabric was leftover from the ottoman below which we made for my parents from my father's spare clarinet parts.