{"id":5545,"date":"2020-06-08T15:50:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T13:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/?p=5545"},"modified":"2020-10-22T13:13:23","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T11:13:23","slug":"first-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/first-steps\/","title":{"rendered":"First Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>How exciting! I just finished an art quilt that I\u2019ve been working on for about a year. To be fair, I haven\u2019t been working on it exclusively. I\u2019ve been giving it a few hours a month, but the months are over, and I have this piece of art to hang in my home. It felt so good to sew the final stitches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>When I started this quilt, my grandson still had long hair. He looked a lot more like his baby picture here. Now he&#8217;s a rough and tumble little kid. My, how time goes by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s the image that I started with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"648\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps-648x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5551\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps-648x1024.jpg 648w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps-350x553.jpg 350w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps-190x300.jpg 190w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps-768x1214.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps-971x1536.jpg 971w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps-1295x2048.jpg 1295w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps-1320x2087.jpg 1320w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps-600x949.jpg 600w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/FirstSteps.jpg 1428w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 648px) 100vw, 648px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This is my rendition in fabric:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"757\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Finished_First-Steps-757x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5552\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Finished_First-Steps-757x1024.jpg 757w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Finished_First-Steps-350x473.jpg 350w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Finished_First-Steps-222x300.jpg 222w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Finished_First-Steps-768x1038.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Finished_First-Steps-1136x1536.jpg 1136w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Finished_First-Steps-600x811.jpg 600w, https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Finished_First-Steps.jpg 1154w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Before I go any future, the first thing that I would like to do is thank <a href=\"https:\/\/cindyrquilts.com\/\">Cindy Richard<\/a> for her help in creating this quilt. She&#8217;s an art quilting master and she has been holding my hand through this whole process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The quilt is made up of layers of fabric that have been fused together and then quilted to add depth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I took some creative license with this quilt. I cut out a lot of the background. I wanted to simplify the quilt and make sure not to draw focus to things that don&#8217;t add that much value. My main focuses were the large tree in the background, my daughter-in-law, and of course my very yummy grandson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The grass in the background is made up of ripped pieces of fabric. Each length of fabric is fraying, which gives it a 3D grassy look. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I found the tree fabric online. It&#8217;s so perfect. It was really a lucky find. I found it a bit nerve-racking to randomly cut holes in it because I only have a limited amount of it. No mistakes were allowed. I&#8217;m a mathematical person by nature. Even when I tried to be random, things came out very evenly spaced. I had to throw caution into the wind and just chop away. I think it came out pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that I put the most work into my grandson&#8217;s face. Getting his likeness was very tricky. I actually made his face twice. The first time just didn&#8217;t work at all. Getting the shading right was particularly difficult. I started with the image and then I posterized it. (More on that in my next blog post.) One thing that I learned is that not all areas should be posterized to the same level. Although I used level 5 for the rest of the quilt, I redid the image with level 4 and it came out much better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My daughter-in-law&#8217;s neck was in too much shadow in the image. I took care of that in my version as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to see in these photos, but the quilting gives the figures more depth. I quilted it to emphasize curves. I used mono-filament thread. It adds texture without adding color. I may go back and add a bit more stitching with colored thread to add a bit more depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All-in-all, I&#8217;m very pleased with how it came out. I can&#8217;t wait to start the next one! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How exciting! I just finished an art quilt that I\u2019ve been working on for about a year. To be fair, I haven\u2019t been working on it exclusively. I\u2019ve been giving it a few hours a month, but the months are over, and I have this piece of art to hang in my home. It felt &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/first-steps\/\" class=\"more-link\">\u05dc\u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d9\u05da \u05dc\u05e7\u05e8\u05d5\u05d0<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> First Steps<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-quilting"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/WhatsApp-Image-2020-06-08-at-2.24.20-PM.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quiltisrael.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}