Self Portrait

March 11, 2019

Self Portrait

I have waited too long to write this blog post. Today is my first day of spring break, so no more excuses!

I'm having so much fun with the Beeutifully Modern Quilting Bee! At the end of the year, after we had made it through everyone's prompts, we decided to do a fun group activity instead of starting over with new prompts.
Kristie suggested that we try making quilted self portraits using the book Making Faces In Fabric by Melissa Averinos

We met as a group a couple of times to work on drawing and creating our portraits. I'm not that great at drawing and I had never tried drawing myself, let alone create my portrait in fabric! I used my camera to take a selfie and then put the photo through a filter. That allowed me to see my facial features more clearly. Then I drew my face on paper (which was super hard to do, especially the nose) and began cutting out pieces in fabric. You can see the progression of how my face changed above. It's amazing how moving a tiny piece of fabric can totally change the look. Since I really wanted my portrait to look like me, I measured out where everything should go. That helped move the process along and my face began to come together.

This is beginning to sound a bit technical, so I'm going to back up here a bit. You see, I had a lot of inspiration for this piece that all came together in a very serendipitous sort of way. The way my brain creates connections is what I love about the way I create things. This piece is the result of seemingly random inspiration, involving new friendships, the joy of music (making and listening to), the 1980's and a mixtape. I'll try to explain myself...

When I started planning for my project, I knew I wanted to use solid fabrics because I enjoy working with them and I feel like it's my style. The floating head immediately made me think of Max Headroom and his laser background. I'm a child of the 80's and laser backgrounds in school pictures were a big deal. I never had my school picture taken with the laser background, so I put it in my quilt haha.

Wondering where the mixtape comes in? It's a great story. Last semester, our student teacher at school was playing this song from his ipad over the classroom speaker. It stopped me in my tracks as my brain did a literal rewind back to 1986. I think I said something like, "WHY are you playing this song?!" The last time I had heard that song, I'm pretty sure I had permed hair, giant pink glasses and was in love with a boy in the 8th grade haha. He started laughing at me and then told me this story.

His brother was at school one day, when a guy came in waving a cassette tape in the air, asking if anyone wanted it. His brother said he'd take it and went to the first teacher he could find who had a tape deck. He popped the cassette in and pushed play. The tape was filled with love songs by Bryan Adams, Chicago, Barry Manilow and Toto. It had to be a break up song mixtape.

His brother took the tape and put it in his car tape player, where it stayed. Everyone who rode in the car with him was subjected to this 80's breakup mixtape. Until one day, the car was sold, mixtape and all. I wonder who has it now? And who actually made the tape? Were they heart broken? I have so many questions. Anyway, after that day, the student teacher and I began figuring out these 80's breakup songs at the piano together, during lunch. You know, basic musician nerdery. It was so much fun and a joyful time for sure, even if the songs were sad.
Being in an 80's mode helped me choose the color scheme for my piece. These colors are reminiscent of a watch that I had back then that had multicolored interchangeable bands.

As I was putting the piece together, I was listening to a lot of I'm With Her. One day, this cover of You Turn Me On I'm A Radio started playing. The words of the song not only inspired the title of my piece but also inspired me to turn the laser background into a radio tower. Do you see how this is all fitting together? I thought it was funny that I had already chosen the play and stop buttons for my cheeks from the very beginning and then at the end, it all worked together with the "you turn me on" part. The lines above my head are a soundwave representation of the word love. What surprised me most about the creation of this piece is that it ended up being more about a feeling. Feeling a connection with others. It was created because of the bee group but the process was more than just being creative this time. When I look at this piece, I will be reminded of so many things. New friendships, my younger self, music, joy! I'm so thankful for all these things. Here we are with our finished faces!