Staging Quilt Photos

Have you ever noticed that some bloggers have absolutely gorgeous photos? 

I have noticed this mostly with food bloggers, even the amateur cooks. 

They make the food look so yummy that you can't wait to try the recipe. 

 

Some quilters have that same talent.  The lighting, the angle all make the quilt or the fabric look drop dead gorgeous.  It makes you want to come back, over and over again just for the eye candy. 

Is it a talent or a special eye or do they take classes? 

 

 How much time do they actually spend staging that shot.

 Is it intuitive or does it take a lot of work?

 

During our quilting retreat, I had a conversation with my friend Sujata, who has that special talent for making her quilts look beautiful in the photos on her blog:  www.therootconnection.blogspot.com

So after the gang left, I decided to put some effort into making beautiful eye candy photos.  After they read this, they will be laughing their a$$e$ off, because sometimes you just can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (that would be me!)

 

I took the projects I had made during our retreat outside.  It was an overcast beautiful Fall afternoon.  I thought the light would be perfect.

 

I took my scrappy quilt I started during Bonnie Hunter's workshop and finished during our retreat and draped it between some trees. It looked great and very stylized.  But you cannot see the quilt pattern.

 

 

So then I draped it over the picnic table where you could see the pattern, but it did look a bit static, but more fun than just pinning it to my design wall.

 

 I decided to move onto the other things I actually finished.  In my quest to use up  my Chanukah fabric I also made  a bunch of pillowcases for ConKerrCancer 

 and I made 4 sets of polar fleece hats and scarves.  The later was for my quilt guild's monthly community outreach project, to be given to the homeless.

 

I thought it would be appealing to stage the photo of the scarves and hats draped over our rowboat.  The rowboat was on our dock, upside down.

 

It looked so beautiful with the scarves flapping gently in the breeze. 

(I placed a pillowcase that was in a plastic baggie, inside of each hat to keep it from blowing away.)

 

I was having a lot of fun trying different "layouts" when a big gust of wind blew one of the hats with the pillowcase inside into the lake.  Arghhhhh!

The two quickly separated.

 

 I don't know what happened to the hat, but the pillowcase bobbed along, heading closer and closer to shore.  I grabbed a long stick and hoped for the best.

 

I walked along the shore hoping I could reach it from one of the docks.  I was so disappointed as it floated by.  It then started coming closer to the shore.  I didn't want to leave anything to chance so I decided to really reach for it to try and snag it before it got away.  I was just thinking about the child with cancer that could really use that pillowcase.

 

Before I was to make that final reach, I thought that maybe I should take my camera out of my pocket and leave it on the shore.  That was the best decision I made that day.  I stepped onto a partially submerged rock to reach for the pillowcase and it must have been covered with algae.  It was really slippery and there I slid, into the lake!

 

The good news was that I was able to grab the baggie.  The water was not too cold, I had left my camera on shore and there was no one there to see a grown woman dripping in lake water, laughing her you know what off!!!!

 

The moral of the story for me - use the design wall.  No hazard involved.

 

 

Wednesday's Wanderings #44 - Quilting Getaway

Fall is here and with it a trip to our little lake in the Poconos with my quilting friends. 

The ride up was gorgeous.

It is a little past peak foliage season, but it is still a sight to behold.

I never used to like orange, but Fall has changed my mind.

Our dock, where we often eat meals.  But it was too chilly this time.

This is what we get to look at when we are sewing.

I also love the color of pumpkins.
 Fall is definitely my favorite color pallette.

We eat a lot, talk a lot and sew a lot.  So far, I have finished my quilt top from Bonnie Hunter's workshop, made 9 Chanukah themed ConKerr Cancer pillowcases, made 4 sets of polar fleece hats and scarves for my guild donation next month and finished my WW block. 

 I'll share photos in my next post.

This year, our friend Jane is home recuperating from thyroid surgery.  (We miss you Jane!)

 My friend, Angela, who I met at a Pro Chem fabric dyeing class joined us. 

I decided for my WW block to celebrate my friends and the Fall weather. 

The block was created in layers.

After quilting the background, I added woodsy tree trunks.

For the next layer, I added the tree branch. 

The final layer was the leaves.  Everyone signed a leaf.  I even included a leaf for Jane.

 And one leaf for Bailey girl - the little heart one. 

 A quilting getaway with friends is the best therapy around.

Thanks to Kelly, Sujata, Terry, Christine and Angela.

And of course, Bailey.

Wednesday's Wanderings #43 - Sewing with Bonnie Hunter

Bonnie Hunter is our guest speaker at my quilt guild this month.  She is the Queen of scrap quilts.  You have to visit her website, www.Quiltville.com .  It is chock full of free tips and patterns. But, it would be even better, if you want to use up a bunch of fabric or scraps, to take a workshop with her. 

Yesterday, I took her Scrappy Bargello workshop. 

 You can see the quilt here.

For weeks before the wokshop, I would look at my stash to decide what type of colors I wanted to use. I waivered back and forth between modern, clear colors or neutral batiks or blue and white. 

 This past weekend I decided to use a bunch of fabric that I have been saving since 1996.  When I started designing Judaic  quilt patterns, I thought I needed to have all the Chanukah fabric that was ever printed.  After a while I realized I never used them in any of my designs. 

So this was the perfect opportunity to use up a bunch. 

First I cut out enough fabric to make pillow cases for ConKerr Cancer.  This would be good for any Jewish kids  that were stuck in the hospital during Chanukah.  Then I cut up the left over fabric for my scrappy Bargello quilt.

Bonnie is a tireless quilter.  You can see her quilt in the background of the photo.

This is an easy, full steam ahead type of quilt to sew. 

Here is half of the top that I completed during the workshop:

I can't wait to sew the second half and then try some other scraps.

So my WW is spending a day sewing with Bonnie and then listening to her talk. 

It is hard to see the Bargello design in this mini,

 but it will certainly remind me of what I did this week.

A great way to spend part of my week.

Oy! Don't Do This

I did something pretty stupid.

I need to buy a new cutting mat.

 

I was pressing a quilt with a hot iron. 

 It didn't even dawn on me that the mat was underneath.   

 

It cannot be flattened : (

Don't try  this at home.

Take The Quilt Festival Pet Project Postcard Pledge!

 

Pokey Bolton was the Editor and Founder of the magazine Quilting Arts. Recently she went to work for Quilts, Inc (Houston International Quilt Festival) and moved from MA to Houston, TX.  She was surprised by the stray animal problem in Houston and came up with a way to help Friends for Life, Houston’s fastest growing no-kill animal adoption and rescue organization. 

 

Pokey has put out a call for animal themed fabric postcards to offer for sale at the Houston Quilt Festival this November to help.  She hopes to get 500 fabric postcards and sell them for $20 each.    

 

 You can read about it here:  Pokey's Ponderings 

 

Here are 3 that I will be sending. 

 

 

And if you would like to see more, check out the blog post of one of my favorite quilt artists,

 Jamie Fingal:   Twisted Sister

 

I ended this fun filled day with a pumpkin doughnut from Dunkin Donuts.  The commercial that they run over and over on he TV finally got to me.  Who doesn't like pumpkin? 

  I have to say that it was yummy, yummy delicious. 

Wednesday's Wanderings #42 - Oh Happy Day

I took the plunge and  hired  someone to clean my house. 

I wish I had fabric with smiley faces all over.

My only words - Oh Happy Day!

Wednesday's Wanderings #41 - "F" is for Fabric

F is for fabric!

The definition of a quilter in the dictionary should include, "loves fabric".

We love to look at fabric.  We love to touch fabric.  We love to buy fabric.  We love to cut up fabric and then sew it back together.  We are what's called Fabricholics.

Almost every quilter I know has a stash of fabric, because we love to buy it.  Sometimes we buy it because we have a project for it and sometimes we buy it because we just like it and have to own it.  Some of us display it proudly and some of us squirrel it away in drawers, in plastic bins, under the bed and in closets. 

 None of us want to think about how much money we have spent developing our stash! 

Something that non-quilters might now know is that stashes need to be managed.  How do we manage our stash?  We do it by organizing and folding and refolding, especially when we are done with a project.  We also make an assessment from time to time.  This is when we realize that there may be holes in our fabric collection, whether it be a color or pattern.  This gives us another good excuse to buy more fabric.  After all our stash is our palette.

I spent this week "managing" my stash. 

Messiness, fabric on the floor and bulging shelves were a few of the motivators.  It is rewarding to see my fabric organized and neatly folded.

It is not a big stash.  I have seen much bigger, (not to mention any names my dear friend S). 

And it's not a small stash.

As written in Goldilocks & the 3 Bears, it's just right for me. 

But that will not prevent me from buying more.

So, F is for fabric.

I started with a low contrast printed piece of fabric.

Then I used my printer to print the word "fabric" in a contrasting color,

over and over again in many different fonts,

just like there are many different types of fabric.

After printing, I layered it with a low loft batting and quilted it.

The quilting obscures the words somewhat and that makes it a happy little surprise, once it is noticed.

Then I used my favorite sequins in chartreuse to decorate a large applique F (for fabric!!)

How do you "manage" your stash?

Or don't you?