“The Modesty of Vitruvian Man with Apologies to Leonardo†was made for The National Quilt Championship 2004 and was drafted from a black and white drawing by Leonardo Di Vinci. (See photo above)
It is an anatomical drawing and based on that fact, I decided to “improvise†muscles and organs for the man in bright, bold colours. Each section of his body was enlarged and divided to get the maximum use of colour and he comes complete with a hinged fig-leaf to protect his modesty!
The starting point after scaling up the drawing to a working size was to section each limb on the drawing and number each piece. Each individual toe and sectioned muscle was a different colour.
This was the original working drawing for the outline colour plan, but was used only as a guide because I kept finding new and more exciting colour- ways of fabric.
I made a pattern piece for each numbered section out of freezer paper, fused the paper to the individual fabrics,pressed the turning and then machine appliqued the sections together onto the base fabric pattern.
Legless! – Two legs and two arms were padded trapunto style to give a 3D effect.
The finished body piece is stitched onto a pieced background constructed of strips of cream, beige and white to try to represent parchment. The border is made from fabric, which has been transfer printed with the actual notation from the original black and white drawing by Leonardo Di Vinci.
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