Quilting and other Things

Flowers Before: The photo of the field of hyacinths was taken early Easter Sunday Morning 2006. The hotel we stayed at was surrounded by flower fields. This is the uncorrected photo. The only change was to resize it for the web. Shoe Before: The bus took us to a cheese and wooden shoe factory. Again, this is the uncorrected photo. The only change was to resize it for the web. Combined Photo: I used the clone tool to move Karen into the field of hyacinths, then used the clone tool again to copy flowers over the edge of the shoe. Both photos where corrected using levels prior to the cloning. The flowers were also cropped. Butterfly Garden Before: This was taken last year at a butterfly garden near Guelph, Ontario. The photo is uncorrected. Butterfly Garden After: I played with levels, dodge, burn and finger painting.

This is a bench in the garden at Leeds castle prior to any corrections or manipulations: This is the photo straightened (Vertical using the back leg of the bench and horizontal using one of the back split rails). Then the photo was corrected using levels" Bench moved to B&W using highlights and shadows method: Bench moved to B&W using threshold method: I liked the highlights and shadows method better. I like the bench better using that method.

I've posted my photos twice to the photo site I usually post to and so far they haven't shown up so I'll use the blog instead. Quick Edit The first picture was taken in the wine cellar at Leeds Castle in England. I used smart fix auto, then darkened the highlights and midtone contrast to get this after photo: Before leaving Quick Edit, I tried the sharpen section and got this: Standard Edit The first standard edit photo is taken in Amsterdam First I straightened the photo. Then it was cropped to get rid of the blank space from straightening. Next it was sharpened using sharpen more. Duplicated the background layer and used Screen 20%. Selected the sky with magic wand (both layers) and made a sky layer. Used Linear burn. The resulting photo was this one: I re-opened the jpeg and selected the sky onto another layer and tried auto correct on the sky. I think it pushed it too far: Finally I played with a picture from the town of Ypres: This is the Be...

January: I picked up a copy of the McCall’s Special Issue Quilting with the Pros. The workshop by Libby Lehman inspired the thread painting in the old English H of this journal. I also started reading the book The Illuminator by Brenda Rickman Vantrease which inspired simple embellishment of the H. I think another time, I leave out the scrolls and work more with the leaves, butterflies and maybe some flowers. A little more sketching of the design before hand would have been useful. February: We haven’t had much snow this year however one Saturday we did get some. It started to melt then got very cold. All the trees and bushes shimmered with ice. This journal is an attempt to capture some of the feeling of that day. There is Angelina fibres, thread painting, tule and crystals. March: I’ve been taking a class through QuiltUniversity.com with Marilyn Belford called Realistic Fabric Portraits. This months journal has a lot of the rejected pieces from the portrait I’m working on...

Last year, and this year, I participated in the Journal Quilts project. Last week my 2005 Journals came home. The photos of those aren't posted yet so while I'm waiting to be able to post the 2006 Journals I thought I'd post the 2005 journals. January: The first one was a "whole cloth" journal. The sketch was doodled over a series of daily meetings until I found what I liked. Then I started to quilt. I didn’t actually transfer the drawing to the fabric. Just kept the paper near the machine and used it as a reference. Variegated purple rayon thread was used to stitch the outline of the vase and the flowers – I accidentally started to quilt a leaf but then the thread broke. Probably the first time I’ve been happy the thread broke as I hadn’t really meant to quilt the leaves. Next was the brown silk thread to do the scribbles at the bottom to represent the table top. Then white silk thread to do all the tiny, tiny stippling around the vase – The fingers hardly move...

I finished the Who will bell the cat? quilt last night. The last parts were adding the bell and quilting cats in the windows. The cat outlines are from Callee perched on the corner of her scratchy post. I printed a line drawing from this picture then traced part onto tracing paper to act as a stitching guide. I still need to add the hanging sleeve and label but the photos and other information for the challenge were submitted last evening. The deadline is Oct 1 so I'm pleased to be a tiny bit early. This is the detail photo Eventually all the submitted quilts will be shown on the challenge pages at QuiltArt The version of the story I worked on is at Project Gutenberg

The mice are finally all stitched. The back window needs to be moved over / made smaller to make room for a photo of the dangerous cat. I'm still not positive how the windows are getting attached. Think I'll go find some dinner and stare at it some more this evening. Below is a detail photo of one of the mice. There is a little bit of pink in every ear. I have a bell on a piece of ribbon. I'm trying to decide if it actually fits in or not. This needs to be finished and photos submitted for Oct 1. I was thinking I wouldn't make it, but today I think I just might. We'll see how things go.