At 11:00 AM on Saturday, March 23rd, I’ll be presenting my design process at the Northwest Quilters Guild show, describing how I move from inspiration through research and sampling to the final artwork. The quilts I’ll be using to illustrate my talk are those I’ve created for two international traveling exhibitions. The first one toured […]
World Poet Challenge
I’m participating in a new challenge with quilters from the US, France, and Japan. There are 90 quilters, with 30 from each country. Each quilter creates a 50 cm quilt based on one of 30 poets, which means each poet will have three quilts. I chose Emily Dickinson whose work I adore. We were asked […]
P is For Poppies and Periwinkle
I’ve been working on another garden-themed piece for what seems a very long time. And it’s going to be a lot longer largely because hand embroidery takes so much time. I haven’t been posting photos because even on days when I work for up to six hours, the piece looks like I’ve made little progress. […]
Northwest Quilters’ October Quilt Guild Meeting
Monday night we had an interesting mix of speakers. The new owner of Montavilla Sewing Center in Lake Oswego came to our meeting to talk about their latest shop, which formerly was The Pine Needle. Generally, Montavilla’s stores sell machines and offer classes associated with their machines. This store is adding fabric to their line […]
Poppies and Periwinkle Progress
In between judging and what feels like a myriad number of other commitments, I’ve been working on my latest wall hanging, “P is For Poppy and Periwinkle”. I’ve finished the embroidery on the flowers and leaves. Here’s where I’m at. Next up is couching on my hand-twisted cords for stems. Below is a photo of […]
Sheila Sinclair Snyder–Oregon Quilters
Our presenter at this month’s Northwest Quilters’ Guild meeting was Eugene quilter Sheila Sinclair Snyder. She talked about her journey in the quilt world. Specifically, she was a longarm quilter for hire for ten years. Her greatest wish during that time was for her clients to deliver quilts to her that were square and whose […]
Wall hanging in Progress–finally!
I’ve been working on an 18″ x 40″ wall hanging. I’m calling it “P is For Poppies and Periwinkle”. Obviously, the main flowers are poppies, while the flowers on the tall stems are called false indigo. I saw the combination of red and orange poppies with the periwinkle-colored false indigo in a neighbor’s garden last […]
Big Winners at Oregon Coastal Quilters Show
After two days of judging in Newport, the winners have been selected. With the show opening, I can announce who these talented quilters are. I love guilds like this one that have two “best ofs” with one for wall hanging and one for bed-size. It’s challenging for small quilts to compete against large given the […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
March–National Quilting Month
Today is the tail-end of National Quilting Month, and here’s what quilting and I have done together. My cousin Michelle asked me to create two wall hangings from state bird blocks embroidered by her mother. This is my Aunt Lee who turns 86 on April 13th, two days after my birthday. She stitched the blocks […]
A Quilt For Conor
When I attended the IQA show in Houston last October, I ran into a new vendor called Patternjam. (Love the name). The company does pre-printed panels for you to quilt, which you can personalize. This past Christmas I quilted a panel purchased from Keepsake Quilting for my nephew Nick’s youngest son who was born right […]
