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Have a great holiday season!

FULL QUILT DETAIL	The Fred 37" x 44", 2003 (the Shelf Quilt) When the Gemini North telescope on Manau Kea was dedicated to the memory of my brother Frederick Gillett, we made our first trip to Hawaii. This quilt is a memory of the that visit and the ceremony. A photo of the telescope was collaged with the view of the mountain from Hilo for the center, and the text "Look for me among the stars" was filled with a photograph of a starry sky. Some of the photo blocks around the edge were collaged, because there were way more photos that I wanted to put in than there were blocks. Each photo has a 1/2-inch flange around it. The sashing and borders are fabric I managed to buy in a 10-minute stop at a fabric store. The quilt is free-motion quilted.
FULL QUILT DETAIL	For the Old Quilter's Home 70" x 61", 1998 An example of a quilt using framed photos. This quilt was inspired by Wendy Etzel's book, Collectible Quilts (now out of print, but she has done Collectible Quilts II with even more ideas. See our website to order.) I carried her idea of a bookshelf just a little further by making it appear three-dimensional. I also decided that if I was going to put photos on my shelf, I might as well add some of my favorite decorative items and make it a real memory quilt. I photographed each item with a navy blue background so it would blend into the background of the shelf. Both the framed photos and the knick-knacks were hand-appliqued, although they could have been done by machine, since I machine quilted. The top molding and the drawers are faced and three-dimensional, with buttons for drawer pulls.
FULL QUILT DETAIL	New Zealand Spring 50" x 50", 1996 These were some of the first photos we put on the computer, manipulated, and printed on fabric. I took them on a trip to New Zealand in October, which is spring Down Under. I discovered that is was really fun to find just the right fabrics to border each block in a Log Cabin style. They were quilted individually and set together as quilt-as-you-go.
FULL QUILT DETAIL	Colorado Ghost Town 54" x 66", 1998 I purchased some old blocks from the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. They looked rather plain when set side-by-side, so I added sashing to each block with South African fabric for the stars. When they were put together, they reminded me of old mine machinery, so I wanted a border of Colorado wildflowers. I wasn't able to find any photos that could be adapted for the design I wanted, so I laid actual flowers on the computer scanner and photographed them, then I printed them on the soft strip fabric.
FULL QUILT DETAIL	Fractured Rose 20" x 20", 1997 Ellen Adams, of Ayton, Ontario, Canada, developed this technique which she calls Shattered Images. She used printed fabric repeats, but I wanted to try it with photos since printing enough identical images was easy. I soon discovered that wasn't necessary, since it was possible to do all the cutting and arranging on the computer before printing it. This image started from a 6" square photo of wild roses. The quilting is done at the same time as stitching down the silk ribbon grid.
FULL QUILT DETAIL	Glimpses of Japan 35" x 36", 1998 We took a trip to Quilt Week Yokohama in November of 1997, then toured the country of Japan for a week. I came home with packets of fabric samples, which determined the size the photos could be. For two of the photos, a long, narrow image was more appropriate, so they are the size of three squares. The border fabric is antique, and the binding fabric was a gift from a Japanese quilter who visited Quilter's Newsletter Magazine. The quilting is not Sashiko, but is similar to a more unstructured quilting I saw in Japan.
FULL QUILT DETAIL	Safe Journey 45" x 60", 1999 When the Children's Foundation of the University of Minnesota Hospitals held a Quilter's Challenge for an auction to raise funds, I wanted to make a brightly-colored quilt that had images of fun things my kids had done through the years, things I hoped that every child would have an opportunity to do. I used a pattern from an old quilt top in my collection, and the fabric I used for the piecing is hand-dyed.
FULL QUILT	Adobe Church 14" x 14", 1999 An exploration of the possibilities of framed quilted photos. We tried several different fabrics to see what would work for hand quilting, since the Southern Belle we normally use is so tightly woven that it's not easy to needle. This is a photo we took at a mission near Santa Fe, and to make the vertical image square to fit the frame, I added some piecing to extend the lines.
FULL QUILT DETAIL	Jessika's Book 7 1/2" x 5" Vivian Ritter has a granddaughter in Denmark, and wanted to make her a cloth book that would show her her American relatives. She used fabric, stickers, and photos to put together each page, then we scanned the page and printed it on fabric. Vivian used a light interfacing to line each page and quilted it, then used eyelets and cord to bind the book together. Instructions for making the book are in the 1999 issue of Quilt-it For Kids.

Fractured Images pattern


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Piecing With Pixels; Unique Quilts From Your Own Images