Grandma & Shadrach FPP (pattern drafting)

2/26/2023

I wonder if I can design my own Foundation Paper Piecing (FPP)? (Of course I can.) I wonder if the cracked ice research I did may help? (Why the heck not!)

When my mom and I left East Africa, we went to Liberia, in West Africa, to visit the family of our stateside Liberian friend. We took a lot of pictures of people there, to bring back to our friend who hadn't seen his family in years. This photo, of Grandma with her grandson Shadrach, is lovely. I decide to use my compass method to see if I can cracked-ice it into FFP slices.

METHOD

The program I use for this is humble Microsoft Paint. I open my jpeg in Paint, pull out the sides of the picture until it's surrounded by white, and zoom out so I can put my origin points down outside the photo. The blue lines are my initial rays radiating from those origin points. It would probably have been easier with another program... one where I could alter the lines after I had clicked off of them. But whatevs... MS Paint is familiar, and what I lost to its clunkiness, I redeemed in time I didn't spend researching and learning a new program! The yellow lines are the features that make the picture, delineating changes of color or subject. I let the background remain large pieces instead of subdividing more, because I want the subjects to come to the fore. Plus, the corners will get cut off by the 'Round the Twist pattern anyway!

My housemate lets me use her printer to print this picture up at 8.5" x 11", and her lightbox to trace the pattern out on paper. At first, as I trace, I try to label alpha-numerically, deciding which pieces go down first, second, third... but it gets messy and confusing, and I start to think that if I can figure it out to label it, then I can figure it out as I sew it, even without labels! Honestly, color choices seem more important than order of operations.

I progress from photo to messy pattern to clean pattern slowly. Then I photocopy it so I have a back-up in case I screw up after cutting and sewing one!

Finally, I color the pattern in, paying attention to whose skin is whose, since I have two different browns for them.

I love lightboxes. Remember being a kid and trying to do this up against a window?

The biggest change is in the cheekbone line of her face, and the extension of lines into the larger size I need for my quilt block.

Only after I've done all this work do I remember that the pattern will be the mirror image of the finished item! So if I wanted to make the FPP look like the photograph, I should have flipped it in the first stages and patterned the whole thing as a mirror image! Instead, I will now end up with an FPP which is the reverse of the photo. But that's okay... Grandma on the right or left isn't a major difference!

But first... procrastination!

I finish my pattern, look at it, and decide I can't focus on this until my semester is over. So I set it aside and do another Bargello quilt block for my sister's soothing Italian quilt!

1 Comment

The Sister

5/26/2023 09:24:29 am

Oh my, this is looking very detailed! I look forward to seeing this block come together, and imagine it will take much more time and focus than the other blocks. Can’t wait!