Our final lesson in Pixeladies Photoshop Elements on-line course was to select a photo we hadn’t worked with before and make at least five adjustments. I picked a photo I had taken of a wall hanging by my friend Mary Telford during our Oregon Garden exhibition. Here’s the original: As you can see I did […]
Printing Your Own Fabric Designs
A lot of quilters and fiber artists are printing their own designs on fabric for use in their own work. Our final lesson covered why and how to prepare images for test prints from print-on-demand companies, such as Spoonflower. I selected a photo of a stamped swatch I had created and a photo of a […]
Three Reasons to Sharpen Your Images
Your photo is out of focus. Keep or delete? There is a sharpening tool called auto sharpen. Frankly, it doesn’t seem to do much. Instead, a better tool called, funnily enough, the Unsharp Mask allows you to make effective manual adjustments. The goal is to sharpen as much as possible without over doing it. When […]
Abstracting Photos for Quilts
I cannot say how much I found this lesson useful in turning photos into patterns for quilts or other types of art. You can do the same thing using pencil and paper or by projecting an image onto a wall, both of which I have done. But PSE makes the process so much simpler. Plus, […]
How to Brighten Your Images
In lesson eight of Photoshop Elements, we learned how to brighten images. For me, the course is about fabrics and how I can use the tools of PSE in fiber art. But brightening an image you want to use as inspiration can help you see it more clearly, so it is useful in ways beyond […]
Auditioning Fabric Colors
Photoshop has an easy way to audition colors in your quilts. It probably one of the easiest things to learn in the program. You can change the hue and saturation of an entire image or change colors individually. You can also “colorize”, making your image monochromatic. I chose this sample block for its variety of […]
Auditioning Fabrics
You can audition fabrics using Photoshop Elements in two different ways. One is to scan fabrics you own and drop them into Photoshop. The other way is to copy fabrics you are considering from the internet onto a “clipboard”. In this way, you aren’t buying fabric you ultimately don’t end up using. We learned how […]
Tracing and Quilting Lines
Lesson five of Photoshop Elements sounds simple. Not so much. Our exercise involved how to trace an image or audition quilting lines for a quilt. It’s so much harder than it looks. And here is one of my images to show just how challenging it is. I use a tablet and pen. I’ve tried drawing […]
Watermarks–important?
Lesson four in Photoshop Elements with the Pixeladies is how to overlay watermarks or other text on your images. As I mentioned, this is my second time taking the course. It’s exciting to see how much more I’m getting out of it. So while I knew how to do watermarks and text, I haven’t been […]
The Miracles of Photoshop
I’m taking the Photoshop Elements on-line course again through Pixeladies. (I thought they called themselves the Pixieladies for the longest time, and I couldn’t figure out why they picked that name. I’m sure they would have loved that. I misread their name the first time, and it stuck in my brain). Anyway, I learned a […]
Zigzag Pizzazz Class Coming Right Up!
On Monday, September 10th I’m giving a presentation at the Northwest Quilters Guild on machine embroidery techniques I call Zigzag Pizzazz. When I was studying design and embroidery through London City and Guilds, we spent one six-month session on machine embroidery. Among the numerous samples required, I did one each of satin stitch bars, satin […]
“Summertime”–Visions Art Museum
I’m a member of the Visions Art Museum in San Diego. I joined several years ago, because I want to support fiber arts and art in general. As my son lives in the city, I have the chance to see the museum’s latest exhibit whenever I’m in town. Visions has an artist level membership which […]
More Minnesota Quilters’ Show
On my third day, I taught Accent Your Quilts With Creative Cords. We spent the morning doing hand made cords. The first one I introduced was the North-South-East-West cord aka a Round Cord, best done with two people. I supplied a kit with a variety of threads and base cords. To make this one, we […]
Minnesota Quilters–What a Show!
I spent the past week in St. Cloud, Minnesota at the Minnesota Quilters 2018 Show, judging, teaching, and lecturing. It was a whirlwind and what a great experience. On Monday and Tuesday, I judged with fellow NACQJ (National Association of Certified Quilt Judges) judge Kathi Eubank. The caliber of entries was high, which is impressive […]
Quilt Market 2018
If you are not familiar with Quilt Market, it’s a vendor market for individuals and companies in the quilting industry. In the fall, Quilt Market precedes the quilt show in Houston. In the spring, Quilt Market rotates among four different cities, coming to Portland every fourth year. This year was our turn. Today I had […]
Northwest Quilters Guild Show
During my featured artist exhibition, I was very busy interacting with viewers. But during quiet times, I had a chance to look around at the other quilts done by fellow members. One of my favorite displays was done by a group and was directly across the hall from me. The combination of quilts was simply […]
Honored to be a Featured Artist
Last June the Northwest Quilters Guild of Portland asked me to be the featured quilter at this year’s show, which was May 11 and 12. I was surprised and honored to be selected. I was planning to do a new quilt or two along the lines of “Z is For Zinnia, C is For Cosmos,” […]
A Fabulous Guild Challenge
Last week I had the pleasure to judge for the Rogue Valley Piecemakers in Grants Pass for the second time. The guild had one of the most exciting challenges I have yet seen. Fifteen members made quilts inspired by the work of artist Charley Harper. For those not familiar with him, he is well known […]
A Nifty Way to Store Quilts
At the last Northwest Quilters Guild meeting, I agreed to “test-drive” a new product called a QuiltSafe for Sullivans, the makers of quilt basting spray, in return for responding to their questions within one week. The QuiltSafe is available in King and Queen sizes. Here you can see I’ve placed a small quilt in the […]
“Heat Wave”
The day before judging the Umpqua Valley Quilters’ Guild show, we went to the Umpqua Valley Arts Center to view the latest High Fiber Diet (HFD) Exhibit entitled Heat Wave. HFD is a small group within the Columbia FiberArts Guild, of which I’m a member. HFD members seek out various regional venues for their themed […]
“Dreaming of Diamonds” in Roseburg
Last week I judged for the Umpqua Valley Quilters’ Guild along with Gerrie Thompson and Val Pellins, two quilters who attended my Two-Day Quilt Judging Seminar a couple years ago. They have been judging since. Here is our pick for Best of Show. This is the second time in three years Doris has won best […]
