Kiva: dog portrait created in fabric

If you’re reading this, it means that I’m now able to share with images my National Juried Show (NJS) entry, titled Kiva. It was accepted into this years Canadian Quilt Association’s NJS. The judging is complete, it’s June 19th or after and I’m finally able to talk about my process. The wait has been killing me!

It started with an email inquiry: “Subject: Wall Hanging Quilt of our Husky, Message: Hi, We are Calgary residents who are interested in commissioning a wall hanging quilt of our deceased husky Kiva. We have numerous pictures and have narrowed it down to a few. Are you available to do a commission, and could we come to meet with you?”

This couple found me through my website (onestraypin.com) through a google search. I was very excited to meet with them as I have a passion for capturing the personality of people’s pets in the fabric medium.

I’ll outline the process I use when creating my animal portraits.

Step 1: Meeting my new clients

My clients had just moved into a new apartment and were discerning about what art they wanted to highlight above their fireplace. Their beloved dog Kiva had passed 7 years ago, and this portrait would be taking prime real estate over their fireplace. We talked about potential layouts and their vision for what they wanted. I agreed to present them with 3 choices of layout as discussed. I took a deposit as a cheque and agreed to cash it when I began the work a few weeks later.

Step 2: The Sketch Phase

I had recently bought a 12” iPad Pro, and when combined with the Apple pencil I have found this combination to be a potent design tool. I have taken a few online classes using Procreate on the iPad. One excellent workshop was with an illustrator named Lewis Rosignol (@lewisrosignol) whom I came across on Instagram. Something about the freedom of how he created appealed to me. Like learning anything new, using new tools and learning new techniques takes practice, and before long I was finding my way around the app and having a lot of fun taking scans of pictures, cutting them up, scaling them, drawing overtop of them, and so on. It is great fun!

One evening while lounging in front of the TV, I thought about making the layouts of Kiva in Procreate. I received about 7 pictures of Kiva in different positions, but none of them were exactly what the client wanted. I began to make a “Frankenstein” version of Kiva by cutting up and reassembling the best bits from several of the photos. I also googled “bright skies” and “husky with its mouth open” and I found a sky I liked and even some trees for the background that I felt well represented a typical dog walking park in Calgary.

I collaged my pieced-up Kiva together with pieced-up backgrounds on the iPad. My previous process would have involved hours more time using pencil and paper, tracing and retracing using traditional drawing methods. I easily emailed these digital mock-ups to the client and they responded with enthusiasm for the middle one with her mouth open (see image below). The brown key line was to determine if they were interested in framing it in a particular way.

Above: the 3 spec layout sketches I made from multiple photos of Kiva and reference on the internet.

This sketch is from my layout images above created in Procreate. It also became the pattern that I printed to paper from my home printer. The process without the ipad could have involved much copying, scaling, tracing and retracing.

The ipad was proving to be a game changer in my process.

Step 3: Starting… the hardest part.

Piece by piece I started to build the dog with fabric. I had quite a few ‘whites’ and ‘greys’ in my stash, but I needed to add more variety to the selection. I realized it is difficult to source a wide range of white fabrics in values I needed to catch the subtleties of Kiva’s fur. Another issue I encountered was most commercial fabric manufacturers print towards yellow or blue hues in their whites or light greys, and for consistancy I was in need of whites that were brighter. I eventually found organic pattern transition fabrics (as opposed to plain patterned fabrics) worked best, to get the values I was looking for.

It took another few weeks to get the values lighter and just right, and then I focussed more on the eyes, she was really starting to come alive. Those blue eyes!

When I was tired of working with white I’d work on the background.

I eventually had 3 fabric pieces in progress – the background, the dog and the foreground. Because of the fragility of the dog in the state that it was in I did not want to move it. I went back to use the iPad with images of each piece. It gave me a good idea of how the 3 would look combined. It really saved time to be able to see the potential of the finished piece

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Step 4: Working out the quilting on the iPad

Image 1: An early iPad sketch of what quilting could look like in the sky
Image 2: Further progress iPad sketch where I was finalizing quilting in the sky.

I also quilted this portrait in the three stages, the background (sky), the mid-ground (the dog) and the foreground (grass area). I worked from the background forward to create a sense of depth. I wanted that affect so the dog would come forward. Using the ipad, I created another layer and with a line mimicking the stitch tried a few different ways I could quilt the sky and the dog. I could also change the line colour to see if it made an impact too. When I was happy I moved to the sewing machine and did it, I stitched across the sky without the dog in place knowing that once the dog was put into place it would cover that stitching but be seamless in behind the dog. I also stitched the trees and background separatley up to the feet of the dog.

Pic 1: the quilted background, Pic 2: quilting Kiva separately, Pic 3: working on the foreground with fully assembled layers.

Step 5: Quilting and finishing

When I quilted the dog separately, I first fused it to a piece of light weight non-woven fusible one side, to give it some stability and I also added a light piece of wool batt to the back of that. I quilted the finer details of the dog and left much around the perimeter of the dog. I fused the top half of the dog to the background and continued to work on the foreground design. This assembly was tricky, but by this time I was working towards finishing and making final decisions.

I added some extra details with thread by hand in Kiva’s face and called it done. I spent time taking high resolution images for myself and entering the upcoming show.

Delivery to my clients

The day came around in February when it was time to deliver the highly anticipated finished Kiva to its owners. I was very happy with the whole process from start to finish and especially with how she turned out. It was a lot of work, but like any project that comes to an end there is a sense of accomplishment and the reward of the client seeing the final product for the first time, loving it and appreciating it was immensely satisfying for me. My clients were extremely happy to have their beloved Kiva portrait realized in fabric and ready to greet them when they come home in a fresh new way.

Final payment was received with much gratitude.

I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have about my process. Please email me direct or DM on FaceBook or Instagram @onestraypin