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Who knew that re-creating a photo with fabric could result in beautiful art quilts? You too can do this with a little bit of guidance.
Pre-COVID, I had a class called “Photo to Fabric”. Brenda Fahlgren of Parker, CO created this beautiful quilt of Lake Moraine, Banff, Canada.
There were several students in the class each with great pictures to start their own projects.
Brenda was kind enough to send me a picture of her finished quilt. So that will be our focus today.
Like the others, she started with a good picture (which requires an interesting composition, is in good focus, has good coloring and cropped appropriately so there aren’t any distracting features). NOTE: future post to come on this topic.
Hint: You can still use the picture if you have access to photo editing software such as Photoshop or Canva.
Then I encouraged the students to enlarge their edited picture. Reason why: large pieces of fabric are easier to work with than small pieces. But before you go making a 10’ x 20’ creation, think about the fabric you have to work with.
For instance, it’s REALLY obvious when you see a seam in the middle of a sky fabric. Cotton quilting fabric usually comes about 42” to 43” wide- so that’s about the width you can make the sky in a landscape quilt.
A few other thoughts about fabric: Scale (the size of an image is everything). You don’t want a 1” tall evergreen tree next to a 42” tall horse-it just wouldn’t look right! NOTE: future post to come on this topic.
Please check out the website as I have all the trees, skies, rocks, water etc. that you need to start a landscape. You can see each theme in the fabric drop down menu.
As a matter of fact, Brenda used several CCQ fabrics in her Lake Moraine creation such as Stonehenge fabric by Northcott and trees. She brought several wonderful fabrics of her own. I especially liked the fabric she brought which had black with white streaks which she used as mountains. It really showed off the mountains’ striations (stripes).
Then she enhanced the striations with more white organic oval shapes to look like snow.
Brenda said, “I used glitter thread for the snow and lake.”
Another technique that brought out the realism in her quilt was value (light to dark). At first Brenda was having difficulty in defining each mountain range. But after suggesting using a slightly different value of Stonehenge for each mountain she was off and running. NOTE: future post to come on this topic.
Finally, she used one of my suggestions to move objects into the borders. Look closely and you can see did this with the rocks.
After the class, she sent a wonderful email in which she said, “Thanks for the class and giving me tools to do this.”
Don’t forget that the month of March is National Quilting Month. 10% off all products on one order in the shop. Use the following discount code at checkout: MARCH
Also if you sign up for the Quilters’ Club (newsletter at the bottom of each web page), you’ll see what’s in store for St.Patty’s day!
Motivational Quilty Quote:
Well that's my 2 cents worth! Please feel free to add comments on techniques you use when making a landscape quilt.
Happy Quilting,
Jackie