The holiday festivities are over, and I finally have time to get back to work on the Paris hexagon quilt. Unfortunately, there is nothing exciting or romantic with what I am doing now. I’ve stitched all the blocks into rows, and now I am stitching the rows together. As you probably know, you can only stitch one side of a hexagon at a time, so I’m just plugging along.

However, I thought I would share with you my method for putting quilted fabric photos in wood frames. Marv and I are especially fond of the way fabric photos look in rustic (or barn wood) frames, and I did several of them for the craft fair we had a booth at in December.

The first step is to cut a piece of 1/4 inch foam board to fit the opening in the back of the frame. You don’t want it too tight, it needs to fit easily. Then I center the piece of foam board on the back of the quilted photo and trace around it. I stitch through the layers on this line, and trim the piece about 3/8 inches from the stitching. Then I separate the front and backing and trim the batting to the stitching. This makes for less bulk at the edges.

I like to use microfiber suede cloth as the final layer that will show on the back of the frame, but I also use muslin frequently. I layer the right side of the final layer with the right side of the photo and stitch them together on three sides about 1/8 inch outside the stitching line I did in the last step. Then I trim the corners diagonally, again to reduce the bulk.

The next step is to turn the quilted photo and the back layer right side out and slide the foam board into it, just like a pillow into a case. I slip stitch the open edge closed. Then I insert the stiff photo into the frame, and fasten it with small brads. This process is easy to do and results in a nicely finished back. Here is a photo of the front and back of one of our recent pieces. Let me know if you’d like more explanation or photos of the process.

Framed photo

Back of framed photo

I’m going to change the subject for just one post here. Two quilters, one my sister-in-law and one a member of my bee, died this summer. Dealing with what they left behind has been a challenge.

I didn’t know Shirley very well, although I did know she was a quilter, loved to go to Houston, had just bought a longarm machine. She and my brother lived on the Eastern Shore, we live in Colorado, but we had a short visit in Texas with other family members in March. I’ll spare you the details, but she died very suddenly after surgery in June. My brother was stunned, and I was unable to get to her services. I offered later to help him deal with her quilting supplies, and he jumped at the offer.

I had been a member of Sue’s bee for quite a few years, and we had all seen her through one round of cancer treatment for colon cancer (get your colonoscopy, please!) three years ago. She had come through it with determination, and we were hopeful of the same results when she had to go through it again this spring. But things did not go well, and she died after 10 days in hospice. Early on, she had asked us to dispose of her quilting things, especially because she was single, and no one in her family would know what to do.

I was very fortunate, in that Shirley was a very organized person. Her fabrics were sorted by color, her projects had patterns and parts and pieces stored together, her magazines had been sorted by title. Even so, it was a challenging undertaking. I’d estimate that I sorted, packed, and stacked about a ton of stuff in three days. Members of her church quilting group agreed to take the supplies; some will go to charity groups, and some will be auctioned for the benefit of the church. Some of her finished quilts will be staying at home, others were given to family and friends.

Sue’s things were not as organized. She made many charity quilts every year, and so our bee’s focus will be using her fabrics and supplies for charity quilts. Our guild has a committee that organizes charity quilts every year, and they will get some of the supplies; we also have Project Linus and ABC Quilts active in our area, along with other more local groups. The next time we get together, we will go through all Sue’s things and decide where they go. It took her closest friend in our bee more than a week to find everything in Sue’s house and move it to her studio.

I guess what I want to communicate to everyone is to think ahead, and talk to your family and friends about what you would like to have happen to your things. Don’t put it off, because none of us knows how our hours are numbered. Those you leave behind will be grateful.

Our first Paris quilt, We Loved Paris, is finished and ready for a label. I thought I’d share a few label ideas with you. First, nothing makes a label more special that adding an appropriate photo. Even if it’s the only photo on the quilt, just imagine how delighted future generations will be to find that on the back of your quilt. As you can see from the image of the Paris quilt’s label below, I used a photo of Marv and me on the train to Paris.�

Second, the size and shape of your label is up to you, but 6 x 8 inches is about as large as I like them. That’s plenty of room to add all the information you want, along with any photos. Speaking of information, you should include your given name (by Grandma is not enough; in a few generations, no one may know who grandma is), where you made the quilt, and the date. If you like, you can add a copyright if it is your own design. It would also be helpful to future historians if you include information on such things as the occasion for the quilt, any inspirations or attributions you would like to make,  maybe even instructions on how to hand it down through the generations if that is important to you. You might want to include information on techniques you used if they are not immediately obvious. (I included the pretreated fabric and printer we used to make the Paris quilt.) You might also want to include a relevant quotation or poetry, or even write a letter to the recipient.  

Photoshop Elements is an easy software program to use to make labels. It will let you place a photo, and add text in any font that appeals to you. It is the program we recommend to students because it is inexpensive, and will do much of what the full-featured Photoshop program will do. Hopefully, you will find a photo of the finished quilt and the label below.                                               

As promised, let me tell you how I printed the hexagon images for the second Paris quilt. First of all, I made a template document that had a line drawing of a hexagon in the correct size. See the image at the bottom of the page. Then, when I finished making a line drawing from a photo (see previous post), I dragged the template on top of the photo, selected the area inside the hexagon with the magic wand, and deleted it. I printed three hexagons on each 8.5 by 11 fabric sheet by dragging them onto the page. (Hopefully, there will be a photo at the bottom showing the print page.) My biggest challenge was to print each photo in red, green, and blue, as well as black. I didn’t want a duo-tone, which had shades of black and gray in it.

The Paris collaboration I’ve been writing about is at a stage where I just need to keep going. The blocks are all quilted, sections are being stitched together, and borders added. So I thought I’d tell you about another Paris quilt project. While we were in Paris, we visited Le Rouvray quilt shop, near Notre Dame. I copy a copy of the book That Patchwork Place did about the shop (in French, which adds to the challenge), and on the cover was a quilt from one of her staff, a hexagon made with toile fabrics. I thought it would be fun to make, but with the hexagons featuring some of our photographs.

But then I had the bright idea of making my own toile fabrics from the photos. I used a couple of different techniques in Photoshop to first turn the photos into what looked like sketches. The first technique, from Photoshop Tips & Tricks, started with using a New Adjustment Layer  to desaturate the photo the photo and turn it into black and white. That layer was duplicated, then inverted to make it look like a negative. The blend mode of that layer was then changed to Color Dodge, resulting in a white image. By applying Gaussian Blur to that layer, the sketch appears.

The second method I used came from Web Design Library. The photo layer was duplicated, then desaturated. A filter from the Stylize group, Glowing Edges, was then applied to that layer (Edge Width - 1; Edge Brightness - 11; Smoothness -5). You can experiment with the settings to get the best lines. Then invert that layer. With both of these methods, I adjusted the contrast to eliminate as much grey as possible. The images below show a photo I started with, and the completed sketch. Next time, I’ll describe my breakthrough method (for me, at least) for printing the final images in red, blue, and green, as well as black and white.