September VQB (virtual quilting bee)......Practice makes......hmmm....

perfect may be too strong of a word.

First - here is the final product.

I didn't want to show my first practice, lest SS have a heart attack. The assignment for September was to create a quilt-block self-portrait.....oh no! There would be no way around machine quilting this block. Thus far I have escaped machine quilting by paper piecing and hand applique, but neither would work for this block. You know this is a unique assignment when there are almost NO self-portrait quilt blocks on the Internet. Don't get me wrong, there are extreme works of art shown out there, but only one that was at my level of sewing ability. Also the lady at the fabric store said, "quite ambitious" when I mentioned what I was doing......oh no!

Like I told Matthew this morning when he took FOREVER to get something done that he thought was boring......"If you have to dissect a frog, don't look at it all day." Really - if you have something hard to do, or something you dread, (or in Matthew's case, something boring).....JUST GET IT DONE. It wasn't that this quilt block was something I dreaded, but it did bring a little fear into my heart! I had never done anything like it and now I was doing it for someone else. If you mess-up something of your own, who cares? But if you have to give it to someone else - OH NO!

First I practiced with complete scrap materials:

I did like doing this with crazy colors, since it made it seem like I was trying to look artsy, rather than unskilled. Carolyn and I thought this practice-fabric was fun, since it did say "sewn with love by Betsy". Of course the fabric manufacturer meant Betsy Ross and not me, but still cool. I love doing projects with Carolyn around, since she thought the original practice was great and wanted to do her own.

Here is Carolyn's self-portrait. She designed it, cut everything out and created the face! I did the machine quilting, so I could have a 2nd practice before my "real thing". Way to go Carolyn, it looks just like you!


One nice thing about quilting a picture of yourself is that you can give yourself as many face-lifts as you want. Lipo - no problem! In my portrait, I added a garden and wore a University of Iowa T-shirt, to make it a bit more of "me". (also, I really liked the gold fabric and didn't have thread to match, so the black and gold color scheme worked for the materials I had on hand). After I sewed on the eye-brows I added the fabric adhesive (so the pieces don't slip while sewing). While ironing the adhesive, I accidentally gave myself wrinkles around the eyes....I guess you can't escape crows-feet, even when sewing!

I am glad that I learned all I did while creating this block, but I am RELIEVED to have it finished and mailed off! I can't wait to see what the other ladies come-up with because some are applique artists (well not professionally, but you know what I mean) :)