The Quilting Arts Book
techniques and inspiration for creating one-of-a-king quilts
by Patricia Bolton
145 pages
| $7 + 4 domestic shipping |
Short Story: I have a box of books to unload. It is a collection of articles from Quilting Arts Magazine. Chapter two is entirely my article series on basic design. The very same articles that led the indomitable and persistent Miss Bolton to call me several years in a row and tell me I must write a book.
The book includes articles from many of my favorite quilters including:
Melanie Testa
Linda and Laura Kemshall
Natalya Aikens
So help a girl out here – I don’t want to carry this box three flights of stairs up to the new studio when it eventually gets finished. You can get the book new for $15 on Amazon but only $7 here.
| $7 + 4 domestic shipping |
When you are going to make a pattern from a photo, especially a simple appliquéd portrait, You need to figure out where the darks and lights in the face are. Faces aren’t usually dark and light delineated so running the photo through a filter makes it a lot easier to see.
This will bring up your Tools. Feel free to crop the image if you’d like. I usually click on the very first tool, Tune Image.
Now you are in working mode. You can change all kinds of stuff here and if you like it you click the check box on the right. If you don’t you click the X on the left. If you want to compare your original to your changes hold the slider icon on the upper right.
Touch and hold anywhere in the photo and a tools screen will pop up. These are all the changes you can play with. Slide your finger up and down to choose what change you want to make, then slide your finger to the left and right to make the change. You will notice at the very top of your screen it will tell you which change you are making and give you a bar and number to let you know how far up or down from the original you have moved. I always start by punching up the brightness.
See up at the top? I’ve now also punched up the contrast by about 51%.
Paper Camera by JFDP Labs is an app that I use to begin the journey from this:
You go girl! We only work on construction of the portrait in the last hour of my Playful Portraiture class and she went home and finished this hunky boy all in one evening.
OLD PRINTER filter. Lots of dots. Kind of cool. If you are going to take a selfie next you need to look for the little camera icon with the circling arrows in the top right corner of the photo. See it? Click it and the camera will turn to the front of you device so you can see your own funny face.
Hello there! Just for practice take a picture. You do that by clicking the blue button with the picture of a camera on it on the far right of your screen. If you are right handed this is very convenient, no?
Click it and it will turn green and open up your device’s photo album. Click the photo you want to open it in the app.
Now you can click the arrows through again until you find old printer. Slide the little slider-thingies (that’s an official word!) back and forth until you have an image mostly in black and white then click the green down arrow. (Up arrows in a box usually mean send, down arrows in a box usually mean save.)
If you click on the green set of three photos icon in the top left here you will then see ALL of the photos you’ve taken. If you want to email yourself a picture to print click the blue box in the upper middle with the send arrow.
You can also double click the “home” button to go back to the home screen or to bring up all the apps you currently have open. I have my photos app open so I click on that. In my photo album I can see both the unfiltered original picture and the filtered version. I find it easier to send photos from the Photos app than from Paper Camera. 
Kathy Ackerman
Kathy Ackerman … again! Sew girl sew!
Becky Harbour
Cris Brookheart
It’s been a while since I’ve sewn something to wear. I took pleasure in going slow. Well – actually – I almost never sew slowly. Perhaps deliberately is a better word. You can do “deliberate” pedal to the metal, right? I sewed interior French seams beautifully finished and pressed even though I had a serger sitting right there next to me. Although honestly – I probably just didn’t want to mess with changing the thread from black to white. And here’s a tip – do you use an edge stitching foot when making hems or topstitching seams? It’s the BEST. I end up sewing almost the entire garment with that foot on.
So after wearing it around for a while I think I’m OK with it. I had no expectations of perfection and knew I was taking a chance without making a muslin first. The V neck spread wide instead of down so the arms and the hood are shifted back farther than I’d like. I thing I have just enough left to make two ties so that I could attach them at the front of the hood and tie them if it bothers me. The pocket openings are cut on the bias so they are gapping as well. I sewed clear elastic inside the hem there but I might add a decorative tuck. I sewed the same elastic inside edge of the hood because I didn’t feel like making a long linen tie and threading it through. Deliberate and lazy at the same time. Or – I just know where I choose to intensify my efforts and where to take short cuts.
When it is very dark outside I love to look up and see that the sky is still there. Sometimes I can see a familiar constellation – sometimes it is just a twinkling smattering of light. When I can see the stars I can see beauty.
Children wish on stars. (Anyone else singing like Jiminy Cricket here?) I have wishes and hopes and dreams. I choose to hope, to believe in good triumphing over evil. Perhaps it’s childish but it helps me through the days.
I decided that making an origami star was a great way to use the maps and tour guides from various trips. I’m not sure if this picture shows the Paris Subway star or the Mesa Verde, CO map star. Then – one day while I really should have done something else…. I went entirely overboard.
My youngest daughter and I got a lot of work done on cleaning up a beautiful treadle singer and it’s cabinet. It’s not quite done yet.
We all really, really love the beach.
Supplies consist of things you already have at hand so you won’t be time or money shopping for things you might not use again. The most important supply is an adventurous willingness to explore, grow, and play as you learn to see and create within the framework of abstract design. Doodles will be scribbled, eyes and minds will be opened, and fun will be had. Won’t you join us?
The Boxing Sisters
Prayers
Feed the Birds
The Society Lady
A Funny Little Guy
Anna Pavlova
Fierce Cheetah Girl
Sweet Little Girl with Hat
Dragonfly Beauty
Little Clown Boy
Diva
“Sacré-Cœur is built of 
“A mosaic in the apse, entitled Christ in Majesty, created by 
“Though today the Basilica is asserted
The climb up to the top is long…
But there are surprises you would never be able to see from below.
Beautiful and rewarding glimpses all along the way.
The cloth for this bear is very subtly dyed then screen printed with an image of the handwritten notation of a fiddle tune collected by a folklorist in the Appalachian mountains. This cloth was also used as the background for Bach Suite I, my favorite quilt creation so far. It features a hand painted cello with the same wings as my bear… beautifully patterned but tattered and worn. 
One interesting bit of information. I think I remember listening to the audio tour and it mentioning that ballerinas had to have “patrons”. They were paid so little, regardless of their fame, that they had to find a “sponsor.” As a result of this, they were looked upon as little better than prostitutes because the sponsors were men (of course) that, well, you know… expected certain favors in return for their financial patronage. Of course, the famous men as composers needed patrons too but didn’t have the same reputation. I’m hoping that, at least, has changed in our world. 
We couldn’t go in, but we did see famous door to box number 5 where the Phantom of the Opera played Mr. Creepy Stalker.
The library was heaven. I love this place and want it in my home. Those folks are looking in on models of sets from various famous productions.
If I knew my opera better I’d probably be able to tell you what opera this was.
looking up
looking down
up
down
up
down
up
down (now this… I looooooove!)
UP… love this too. The guard didn’t love the way I took the picture though. 😀
The entire place is a stage. The grand staircase with balcony after balcony that allowed for society to present and to view itself is a stage. 
I love taking it in just a piece at a time. It is the same as good design in gardening – my favorite being creating paths for the eyes and rooms to experience. In a place like this that is overwhelming with detail I like to pull in and look at smaller views.
I love this beautiful statue, the Pythia of Delphi, sculpted by 
You can’t look up or down or sideways in this building without being bombarded by decoration. Sometimes a small bit of that decoration can be amazing! I’m glad I’m not in charge of cleaning this place.
One of the lobbies.
But if you zero in and look a little closer….. there are delights everywhere you look.
Find wherever your programs Brightness/Contrast controls are hiding and give it a click. Up will pop a window with two sliders.
Play around with the sliders until you can see that the image is as bright white and dark black as you can get it without losing parts of your image.
I also often play around with Levels instead of brightness/contrast. This is the most complex of the three methods but it isn’t a big deal. Remember that control+Z is your best friend. It is the UNDO button. 
There are three sliders in the levels window to play with. I’m certainly not a photoshop expert so I’m not sure I can explain to you why these work or how – but they do. First I mess with the slider on the right under that funky mountain graph looking thingy. It usually makes the white background whiter as I move it to the left. Next I work with the middle slider. This one is more fiddly – I move it back and forth until I’m happy with how black my blacks are. Sometimes I mess with the far left slider but not often. 
The last and sometimes quickest tool to use is the Threshold filter. It’s also the tool that is hidden in different places in every digital editing program so you might need to type it into the Help bar to find it.
There is only one slider to play with and you get ALL black and white immediately. You need to slide the little pointy button back and forth though. I really didn’t want all that shadowing on the upper right to show up.
So slide that slidy slider around and see what happens. In this case – moving it around too far got rid of the shadows but lost some of the lighter circles in a different part of the doodle. Again – play until you are happy with what you have.
Here is a middling image that doesn’t have any messy bits and has enough of the circles intact to make me happy. What do you think?
… you might need to further edit it. Say you drew your doodle on a 4″ x 6″ page but you actually want a 6″ x 8″ image? You will need to size it. These instructions will work with pretty much any digital editing program. I’ve used Photoshop Elements, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and Gimp as well as a few others. If you can’t find the tools I mention in exactly the same place just open your program and type the tool name in the HELP box at the top. Most of the programs will give you an arrow pointing to where that tool is located.
The crop tool will probably open a box over your image that you can then pull or drag along each corner to get rid of all the extra white.
Now you can change the width and height to whichever size you prefer, so long as it fits within the guidelines for a small, medium, or large thermofax screen.
Waning Crescent Meditation by Deborah Boschert
Green Bowl by Deborah Boschert
Horizon Embraced by Deborah Boshchert8 x 8 inches
Guadeloupe Woman by Augustus Sherman
Russian Cossacks by Augustus Sherman
Scottish Boys by Augustus Sherman
Dutch Children by Augustus Sherman
In 2010 it was created by German atelier Sanfte Strukturen led by Marcel Kalberer. Five years on it looks a little different. Look for the metal birds roosting…
Departure
LOVE IT!!!!
Back then I had far fewer “natural highlights” in my hair. This past summer the entire family was together again. Again there was much laughter – but after ten years there were far more burdens than there were then. I want to remember that carefree time. These are some of the people in this world that I love and admire the most. Everyone in my family lives very far away from each other. We miss each other a lot.
Spending a week surrounded by ALL the people I love most in the world.
Seeing wide open skies and fields full of ripening crops.
Driving and ATV for the first time.
Being surrounded my memories of childhood.
More time with family – driving across OR with my sisters family.
A full weekend watching Drum and Bugle Corp Competitions.
Turning off the TV to find peace.
And finally back home. There is beauty here too.
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
“”There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know.”
“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”
You are old, Father William, the young man said,
I had the serious honor (well – one can never be too serious when Alex and Ricky are in the room!) of being invited back to The Quilt Show; this time to their studio rather than out on location. For those of you who missed it the first time I filmed in Charleston and Asheville. I’ll stick in a links list at the bottom of this post… I had too much fun revisiting those travels and you might enjoy them as well.
This was my first time on set with a “LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE!!!” That was a hoot. Yes the audience is there – and it is alive and breathing. But they have to hold still and breathe quietly while actual filming is happening. And there are a bank of huge cameras between what is going on set and the people watching – so they actually only see what you are doing on the big screen TV’s that are on either side. I like to ham it up and play with people so I did a lot of pretending that I could see them.
It was funny that after the filming is all done, they turn the cameras around and film the audience having different responses to what happened previously on set. They would be directed to belly laugh or nod or chuckle or simply “look really attentively” at – something – usually something silly in Justin’s hand, like a marker.
What was just as fascinating to me was sitting in the control room for a few segments – watching various people do invisible jobs that make the show look great. There are sound and lighting engineers with ranks and ranks of buttons. A Camera engineer who watches the action and tries to keep up with which shot will best show what is going on. I’m told I move a little to quickly on camera and I tried, really I did, to slow down. Shelley, the producer watches closely to make sure everything makes sense and flows and a note taker writes as fast as she can so that they can shoot all the right pick-ups and put them in all the right places. It’s really cool to see what is going on behind the scenes to make those things all work out seamlessly as you watch the screen.
My work was in a real, live museum. A lovely, tiny, well respected museum that showcases textile arts. I have 
Here is the first thing you see as you walk to the reception desk and peek in the door to the exhibit.
Then this. The artists were invited to come early and take pictures before the reception officially started. Because of that “no taking pictures” thing right there on the sign, I suppose.
Turn to the right and you see the rest of my works. It’s wonderful to see them all hanging together.
Here is a view – backed out just a bit. Sue Cavanaugh’s beautiful shibori forms captivated me.
Ann Johnston’s work, as always, was richly layered and textured and yet elegantly simple. Did I tell you hers was the second book I bought when I chose to do this thing with cloth and art. What I wouldn’t have given to see her there as well. Through the door on the end was Jane’s exhibit. Please go 
The no-nonsense side of my head was telling me the whole time how silly the anxiety was, and how it didn’t matter if anyone stopped to take a look at my art or not. The success was in the making of the work. The actually finishing it and the putting it out there. 98% of the time that is the only voice I ever hear and I really don’t worry about things. Getting in to shows or not, winning awards or not, they don’t really phase me much at all. But an opening reception? Whew. What a ride!
And a little stitching on the side. 
On the road.
I don’t subscribe to that school. I showed her the basics then let her play around, never commenting when something was a mess. She loved it. She would experiment with construction techniques and show me her creations. Every once in a while she would get frustrated and I’d tell her a way that might be easier. Sometimes I tell her that on the next one she makes she might like doing it ‘this way’ instead.
Mill Wheels III: grid
More leftovers from the Mill Wheel series.
This design began with the circle I had cut away from under a wheel shaped appliqué. (You can see that piece 
A Love Letter by Cathy Hedberg
Improv by Judi Bastion
Voices in my Head by Jill Kerttula
Upper left piece by Lynn Harrill
On my second afternoon of wandering through Asheville’s 
Anyway – back to the art. Around the corner more crows caught my eye. This time the layered texture and imagery stopped me short and drew me in. So did the label… I love printmaking and artists who use this art form but wasn’t sure what a 
I wandered some more and in a tiny back corner by the window I was delighted to find Dona at work, carving out a block for a new logo. 
