Encircled in Love

This quilt, based on a selfie of a joyful mother with her beloved daughter nestling happily in her arms, took me far out of my comfort zone. As someone who paints realistic portraits it was not easy to work with values in printed fabric. I still made some kind of basic rules, like choosing bright colours to depict the pair's joy, symmetry in fabric prints on either side of the faces and cool blues and greens in shadows. I used Susan Carlson's technique of raw-edge collage, gluing the tiny fabric pieces lightly on top of each other to build up the picture. The entire piece is brought together under tulle through quilting. The quilted spirals speak of the daughter's fondness for spinning objects and the larger arcs encircle the duo in love!