New Quilt: Self-Portrait

 Well, this isn't isn't a new quilt at all.  I'm sorry to say that I'm so far behind in blogging that this was a quilt I started in a Katie Pasquini Masopust workshop in spring 2023 and finished shortly thereafter.  It's already been off to a touring around SAQA NM show and will be coming home soon.  Craziness.  I really do like to have a record of things on the blog though so I'm going to try to get caught up.  

The workshop was do do a grid style abstracted piece from a photo.  Most folks in the class were doing flowers or still lifes or something and while I took several pictures to start from, I really wanted to try to do a self-portrait.   

This was my starting picture, and the grid and pattern I drew are right below it.

The blocks are foundation pieced and all the fabric came from my shiny/textury stash.  It's a blend of silks, velvets, shiny polyesters, microsuedes, and maybe even some brocades.  I finished piecing and quilting all the blocks while I was at the workshop-- it was an Empty Spools session at Asilomar so I had several days to just put my head down and focus.  It was kind of hard to see in the beginning, especially with all the raggedy blocks, but after quilting them all and squaring up I was thrilled that the portrait part was starting to emerge.  The face and the hands were most challenging and was so excited with how they turned out.

After I got home I struggled to figure out how I wanted to finish it.  I was originally thinking of some 3D approach, but in the end decided on just an openwork treatment with about 1/2" of space between each block.  It's finished sort of like my Prayer of St. Chrysostom quilt.

Self Portrait, c. 2023 Shannon Conley

I'm so so thrilled with how it came out, so much better than I expected.  I sent it off to the Personality Plus SAQA regional show pretty much as soon as I finished it and am kind of looking forwad to having it back soon to hang in the house.  The Empty Spools workshops really are an amazing opportunity to just really put your brain to the work and get stuff done.