My Literary Quilts: Portraits of the Poets

In 2016 I woke and a quilt flashed into my head. I went to the local quilt shop, bought fabric, and by day's end had the quilt designed and started. I finished it the next day.

My William Shakespeare portrait quilt started me on a new quilt series. 

I sketched the image on a large sheet of paper and cut it out for templates for the head, hair, and body. 

The portrait was made with snipped fabrics fused to a black background. I then cut the portrait out, leaving some of the black which I folded over and hemmed. Then I placed the portrait on the background. I printed Sonnet 116  on fabric to include. The flowers in the foreground were also lined are folded for a three-D effect.

It was so much fun that I next made an Edgar Allen Poe portrait quilt. I made the image the same way, hand snipping prefused fabrics to build the face. I made a pieced background and added a 'silken purple curtain' of gently folded fabric. I attached the portrait onto the background, adding Poe's poem Annabel Lee and a real feather in the inkwell.

For T. S. Eliot I searched for cat fabrics. I printed his portrait to the size I wanted and traced it onto my fabric. I used permanent marker pens to create the portrait. I found an image of a cat and then reversed. And printed out The Names of Cats on fabric.

I typed the names of the cats in the poem and printed it on fabric which is used in the pieced background.

I have been reading quite a few books on the Brontes and a few years back read all their novels and poetry. 

I used the image of the sisters painted by their brother Branwell as my model for the Bronte Sisters quilt. 

This time I directly fused the fabrics onto the Jane Sassaman fabric background, then fussy cut flowers from Sassaman and Kaffee Fassett fabrics. I wanted to show the women's romantic and wild sides.

I have been working on an Emily Dickinson quilt but need more fabrics and I haven't found what I want. Since the pandemic I have only shopped online.

My idea was to show the many images we have of the poet: the recluse in white, the lover of flowers and gardens, her darker side that wrote about death and pain, and the romantic lover and writer of Valentine poems.

My techniques include fusible applique and permanent marker and colored pencil. I have a lace overlay to represent a curtain at her window.

This has been a fun series to make.