Scion,

I am not mad at you at all. However, it is not a "dress" but rather a wrap, so there is no stitching, it is tied off behind her right shoulder. Also, that is truly a tummy, not a pillow. Was my shading too harsh to make it seem more square than round?

Can't do anything about the hand placement, it is what it is.

she'd look more in the scene if you put some vegetation in front of her, like some of the grass from the bottom left

Looking forward to Digital's work on this!

ahhhh i tried..... just an idea..or brain fart....but you could use the BG image you have. Then mask and use the chalk brush to reveal the BG around her...leaving the rest masked and white....o.k maybe not the best idea...but it's something.

Ok Ok! Let's use the picture as source for our daily contest so that Delia can have more idea to choose from or better let the woman in the picture choose the winner.

The main problem I see with the image is that the BG has a ton of light and the subject has hardly none. The main color of the BG is blue and the color of the subject is not.

Here's a quick attempt to bring it a little closer to blended. It's nowhere near perfect, but it's starting to get blended a bit better.

This all is in no way offensive to me... This isn't me in the pic!

However, this is my good friend, and this is her 5th baby in 5.5 years, so for a number of reasons I wanted to do something nice for her. Mainly, becuase she is a nice gal. Secondly, because she doesn't have a lot of money to throw around having studio pics done. And thirdly, because she really liked this picture of herself.

Anyhow, I was just trying to salvage the image for her into something she can have hangin' around, and she mentioned she loved the image, but hated the cluttered background.

I'll ask her if I can share the photo here and let you all go crazy with the original if that is something you all want to do. :=) I know it is hard to give tips without a source image to look at, but I don't want to post it without her permission, though she didn't mind me posting my edited ones, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I think working here with a tinted-coloured background might be better.
for example a curtain-shaped background, not dominating, but subtle.
In the front I wouldn't place anything.
Maybe working with black&white colours and then adding a tiny little bit if colourised Hue/saturation to it would be nice too.

It's hard to tell I guess, have to try for myself to see what suits best, just sharing some thoughts here