Photoshop Your Quilt into Different Quilts

My big idea was to create a building under construction, based on some of my New York City photos, especially of the building on the left.

To capture the sense of looking directly inside rooms, I drafted a foundation paper piecing patterns. It's constructed in strips. Here are the top portions of two of the strips. 

And here's what it looked like, all sewn up. It didn't give as much of a sense of space as I'd hoped.  

It's very small - most  pieces are an inch or less - so there was no obvious way to slice it apart, to turn it into something else. 

But while doing routine editing of the image in Photoshop, I decided to play with some of the filters. I am not great at Photoshop, but I do know how to click on things, in this case, the menu items under "Filter Gallery".  

First, "glowing edges." To my surprise, this image gave MORE of a sense of a building under construction than the fabric version! It also bears a strong resemblance to my original foundation pattern!

I'm titling the next experiment, "Jaws 1". I see circling sharks. Unfortunately, I didn't write down the command I used. I also have no idea how one could make this in fabric, except maybe through extremely intricate applique. 

Here's what the "pinch" command produced: 

"Polar coordinates":

Here: "Shear" 

This looks like rick-rack.

"Zigzag" command: Jaws 2: The sharks are speeding up.

Jaws 3: The sharks are going so fast that they are exuding global  centrifugal forces, causing tsunamis.

This came from the "stained glass" command. This design could be replicated precisely, with English Paper Piecing, but you'd have to number every paper piece, and add arrows showing which end is up. Cutting and sewing the pieces together would take years. 

However, the program allows you to reduce the number of cells, which creates something very doable.

To that image, I added Glowing Edges. How cool is this? It looks like a modern stained glass quilt.

"Extrude": Looks like a helicopter view of a city of LEGO skyscrapers. 

My favorite - "spherize" - because the results look so real.

Adding "glowing edges," a potential pattern emerges. 

There is one easy way to make any and all of the "impossible" quilts: Print them onto fabric, from your home printer, or through a service like Spoonflower.com, and then quilt it! 

More ways to play with your photos of quilts, and then transfer them to fabric to create a new quilt, is in a 2014 blog post, here . My experience with miniaturizing and printing entire quilts via Spoonflower is here.  

Memory Pillow: The Dog Who Loved to Eat

Not long after I became a quilter, I realized I had acquired a superpower: The ability to console the bereaved, in a tactile way. 

A few months ago, my friend Lynn lost her beautiful dog Kenya. She told me how sad it was to come home and see Kenya's empty spot on the bed. I knew I had to make a pillow for that spot. Here's what came out. 

It's not just the finished pillow, or quilt, or whatever, that is consoling - it's the process, talking to the person about their loved one. When I asked Lynn what Kenya enjoyed, I was hoping she'd say something like a red ball, sticks, a teddy bear, something easy to piece or applique. Instead, Lynn said:
"Food." 
"Which food?"I asked.
"All food. And dog bones." 
Fortunately, I had a scrap of dog bone fabric:  

Plus, I own an infinite amount of human food fabric. I pieced together some food fabric strips, cut them them crosswise, and set them in the outer border. 

That border started out wider, but then I had to buy a smaller pillow form than expected (the store range was limited.) So I cut it back. That made the food border on front so thin you could hardly tell what the foods were. That's why I put more of the same food fabric on the back.

The central photo started out like this - Kenya with her younger brother Ziggy. I cropped it Photoshop. 

Then I printed the cropped photo onto a sheet of EQ Printables Premium Cotton Satin. It's pricey but the color comes out well, and it's permanent (Plus, my printer uses Epson Durabrite ink, which is  also supposed to be permanent and waterproof.)  
The goal of this pillow was to make Lynn smile. Dogs whose favorite food is everything are funny. And I hope the grass fabric suggests she's rolling in the lush grass of heaven. 
For more memorial quilt and pillow projects, click on "memorial" in the word cloud on the right.

Spain II, or, How to Color Your Summer Vacation

Several weeks ago, I showed how the medieval rock walls in Spain inspired me to do some freemotion quilting.  I basically stared at my vacation photos, then sketched out the major lines. It took me 2-4 rounds (per photo) of practice sketching and stitching to get decent results.

All my pieces had batting on the back, so that the freemotion quilting created contours.  Once the outlining was done, I selectively colored some of the pieces. Then I zig-zagged them together.

 ...Added turquoise binding to cover the seams.

 Put felt on the back, and covered the edges with strips of felt (though in hindsight, I probably should have done a simple zigzag edging or traditional binding).

 Done!

I gave that one away, and wanted another one to keep. So once again, I stitched out some of my favorite photos.

...Which caused me to reflect on the fact that, no matter how many decades I've been freemotion quilting, I still need to practice with any particular image or motif immediately before the final run. Practicing the week before, or even the day before, only counts a little. You also really have to do it moments before. (Or at least, I do.)

For this round, I did more coloring.

 Here's what I have so far for quilt #2.

Here's a procedure for turning your vacation photos into a coloring book quilt:

1. Take lots of photos, so you have lots to choose from.
   
   
2. Pick favorites.
   
   
3. Sketch out the major lines of the photo on paper. Or print out your photos and trace the major lines onto fabric.
   
   
4. Strive to connect all the lines. The less you cut the thread, the better, because coloring can dislodge thread ends. At the very least, strive to begin and end at the edges of your piece (rather than the center).
   
   
5. Draw it again, and maybe a third time. Then stitch a practice round.
   
   
6. Choose a light-colored fabric with very dark thread (I used dark brown thread on an assortment of tan and gold fabrics). Back the front fabric with batting and (optional) a backing fabric. To minimize tension agony, use the same thread in the top and bottom. 
   
   
7. Go for it. Stitch out your design.
   
   
8. Gently color inside the stitched lines. You can use school supplies - Crayola crayons and markers work fine.* If you're an art supply snob use the good stuff - for these drawings I used Caran d'Ache Neocolor II water soluble crayons; Prismacolor colored pencils; and some low-quality no-name watercolor pencils which I don't recommend because the points kept breaking. UPDATE: I took a wonderful class from quilter Ana Buzzalino on coloring fabric with Derwent Inktense pencils (and fabric medium (or aloe) to make the color permanent). There are several tutorials now online for "coloring fabric with Inktense pencils," along with the classes Buzzalino teaches here.
   
   
9. If you used watercolor crayons or pencils, and are ready to start the bleeding, use a tiny brush and small amounts of water. Don't paint all the way up to your stitched lines, or the paint might bleed across the boundary.
   My two villa drawings below are colored in watercolor crayons, and I proceeded very, very cautiously in wetting the boundary areas with my teeny brush. 

Each finished portrait can turn into a separate wall-hanging. Or, zig zag them together, cover the seams with binding, add a backing and binding around the circumference. Have fun! Let me know how it goes!

* Find a tutorial on coloring fabric with crayons at: 
http://sew-whats-new.com/group/welovetoquilt/forum/topics/color-on-fabric-using-crayons
http://www.urbanthreads.com/tutorials.aspx?t=crayon+tinting

Watching Blockbuster Skies, Brainstorming Eclipse Art

Nature put on two high-altitude shows last week, one astronomically stupendous, and the other meteorologically harrowing. We are all worried about people in the path of devastating tropical storm Harvey - they don't need quilts, but we can donate funds to a variety of helpful agencies. 

For those of you in need of a distraction from the storm news, let's discuss the eclipse. How was yours?  Here in Los Angeles, I felt a bit let down. At 62% coverage, the world didn't look any darker. Birds didn't flock, dogs didn't bark, everything seemed normal. 

But as an opportunity to commune with humanity, it was a blast! I rendezvoused with my DH at Cal Tech in Pasadena, where he works. This campus is normally so quiet that you rarely see more than one person at a time walking its shady paths. But on eclipse morning, it was thronged with joyful crowds. I had to park a half mile away, and hike in. The event sponsors ran out of viewing glasses long before I arrived. Fortunately, my DH had obtained some in advance.

Gazing through the glasses, I kept thinking: A little smiley face in heaven!

More thrilling were contraptions people made or enlisted into the effort to watch safely. There were welding helmets, and cereal boxes with aluminum foil patches. And I especially loved these two physics students' clever colander contraption:

Closer:

Now I am trying to figure out what kind of fabric art piece this inspires. NASA people to share their eclipse-inspired art, as I explained in my blog post last week. The deadline is September 15, and the rules are at go.nasa.gov/2qoqTis. (I am assuming that an art quilt fits into their "mixed media" category.)

My friend Anne Finkleman witnessed the eclipse from Atlanta, where they had 98% totality. Here are some pictures she took outside of her office building of the eclipse's shadows coming through tree leaves, which act like a giant colander. I think I'm going to base my NASA quilt on her very cool images (I have her permission!) That brick pattern is so similar to log cabin piecing.

 Here's another image she took of a different sidewalk. This sidewalk has squares on point.

That is a lot of smiles. Which brings us to the question: how to render this kind of image effectively. Applique? Thread painting? Last week, I mentioned bleach discharge as a way to get a spacey effect. 

Since then, I dug out and photographed this experimental piece made a decade ago, as a failed attempt at an astronomy-themed prayer shawl for my son's bar mitzvah. I ended up going in a different direction, but I still have it, made with Decoularant on black fabric (safer than bleach, no toxic fumes, no financial affiliation). It's over 2 yards long: 

It's based on this famous NASA photo of a spiral galaxy: 

I just painted on the Decoularant, did a little overspraying with more from a spray bottle, ironed and washed, and the results were pretty cool. Here's the front, center. 

And the back, center: 

 The back is even better, right? Below, the back, from a distance....

 Some cool blobs from the front:

And the back:

So you can see where discharge has potential for eclipse art! As does paint. Here's a Rosh Hashana postcard I made years ago with rubber stamps and white acrylic paint. 

That planet on the lower left? It's stamped with a foam circle in white paint.   Here are a couple more experimental foam circles made with paint for a different postcard (Just don't ask me why I put mah jongg tiles in space. I was young.)

More eclipse art: Oregon State University held a quilt show in honor of the event. The Quilt Show showed off some great images of art made BEFORE the big event, here.

If you need more inspiration for eclipse art, photos collected from private citizens as well as NASA scientists are on Flickr, here. If the photo is taken by a private citizen, you will need their permission to use it. If you want to view (and possibly use) NASA photos only, there's a wealth of images starting on this page. For example, here's a wonderful time lapse image taken for NASA by Aubrey Gemignani:

And below is another NASA image taken over Madras, Oregon. 

NASA's generous image terms of use are explained here. 

Finally, don't throw away your eclipse glasses. Donate them to Astronomers without Borders so needy young people can use them in the future!  Find the information here.
For those of you in Harvey territory: Stay safe.

Make an Eclipse Art Quilt! And Share it with NASA!

The good news: There's a once-in-99 years worldwide eclipse tomorrow! 

OK, that's not news, you knew that. What you might not know is that NASA is inviting people to make art quilts based on the event! The agency says, "You have until September 15, 2017 to complete your work, take a picture and upload it ...by using #EclipseArtQuilt."  To learn more about the Eclipse Art Quilt project, go to go.nasa.gov/2qoqTis. 

So now you may be thinking about whether you should photograph the eclipse. As a rule, it's a good idea for quilters to take their own photos to inspire their fiber art. But an eclipse may be the exception. You surely know that to protect your eyesight, you should not look at the eclipse without certified safety glasses. Taking direct photographs of the eclipse is also unsafe for your camera if it isn't outfitted with a solar filter. NASA's advice on safe eclipse photography is here. UPDATE: Even a cellphone selfie isn't safe for your eyes.

Fortunately, there's no compelling need to take your own photos. There are fantastic, abundant, royalty-free, and/or public domain eclipse pix - from the the past and tomorrow .

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has a long page of royalty-free photographic images of solar eclipses, at https://eclipse.aas.org/resources/images-videos.  You can't use them for commercial purposes, and must credit the photographer. Here's a simple-but-elegant time lapse photo from the site, taken by Rick Fienberg/TravelQuest International/Wilderness Travel, who had front-row seats to the event on a cruise ship off the coast of Indonesia. 

Is that not awesome? I could imagine creating an image like on fabric, using a discharge method that pulls the dye out of dark fabrics. Discharging can be done with anything from bleach pens to low-fume  agents like DeCoulerant, which is carried by many quilt shops. Read more about discharging on Dharma Trading's informational webpage, here. 

Below is another amazing Rick Fienberg image, of what astronomers call the eclipses' "diamond ring". According to AAS, the ring "appears just before the beginning of totality, when a single bright point of sunlight — the diamond — shines through a deep valley on the Moon's limb (edge) and the inner corona — the ring — becomes visible." 

Again, I could see translating his image with bleach discharge on dark fabric. Or maybe with a process known as sunpainting, in keeping with the cosmic theme. Or painting on white fabric with black and grey paints, using Mickey Lawler's addictive SkyDyes approach. Or  improvisational cutting of grey and black batiks. 

Want to review more images? Tomorrow, there will be an onslaught. According to NASA, "Viewers around the world will be provided a wealth of images captured before, during, and after the eclipse by 11 spacecraft, at least three NASA aircraft, more than 50 high-altitude balloons, and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station – each offering a unique vantage point for the celestial event.....Never before will a celestial event be viewed by so many and explored from so many vantage points – from space, from the air, and from the ground..." 

(Above is a NASA image.) And what if you can't get outside during the eclipse? You'll be working, or sleeping, or not feeling well, or a caregiver? NASA is going to televise the whole thing! Learn more here. 

Just for fun, I decided to google "Eclipse Quilts," and here's what I came up with. First, this Main Street Market pattern (it doesn't look anything like NASA photography, but is spectacular), 

And this really cool pattern designed by Sandy Brawner of Quilt Country, right now on Etsy, here. (No financial affiliation with this company or any company in this blog post!) 

The classic quilt book Strips'n'Curves by Louisa Smith has a slew of eclipse-ish quilt projects. 

When  you think about it, an eclipse is a process by which a full circle becomes a partial circle, and then recovers. If that's not quilt fodder, I don't know what is. 

Finally, super-quilter Carol Bryer Fallert Gentry made a famous series of Corona quilts,  Corona 1, Corona 2, and Corona 3 in the 1980s. On second thought, these quilts are so magnificent that I would now like to heave my sewing machine out my window. (Fortunately, I live on the ground floor.) So maybe you should design and finish your eclipse quilt, share it with NASA, and THEN look at what Carol made!

For more ideas on using public-domain astronomy photographs in fiber arts page, check out this earlier blog post. 

UPDATE: Thanks to a tip a commenter, below, I learned that the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY is showing Fallert Gentry's famous Corona 2 quilt, in honor of the eclipse. You can see it on the museum's website, here (as well as at the link above, on the artist's website). The museum will close for 15 minutes at midday so staff and visitors can witness the event! 

UPDATE: Thanks to a friend, I learned of a spectacular raffle quilt made by members of the Madras United Methodist Church in Madras, Oregon. Proceeds from the raffle go to a local food pantry. Learn more about it here (scroll down). This image is from their website. The raffle ends August 22. 

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