JulieB Designs: Behind The Scenes » Photo Quilt

Office triptych

julie — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:03:58 +0000

I was commissioned by Bill to create a triptych for his office. Actually it started out as a single panel, but as the discussion progressed it turned into a triptych with a single color connecting the panels visually.

I used OmniGraffle to size the photographs and create the bordering blocks. It actually worked very nicely to plan the project out in advance. I am not a very spontaneous quilter. I really like to know what I am going to get in the end. Using OmniGraffle I was able to plan out my piecing to make the piecing easier as well as play with the sizes of the blocks surrounding the pictures to get a pleasing arrangement.

Once I had the sizes nailed down I played with color. I based the colors of the quilt on the colors within the photos. Using the software I made several versions of the quilt in different color ways to see which one I liked best.

Bill provided all of the photos. I cropped them to best highlight the subject and to create varied picture sizes. I was also able to incorporate his interest in ham radio by including a message in the border in morse code. The panels represent his work, family and hobbies.

Whitestar Quilt

julie — Sat, 06 Mar 2004 21:02:52 +0000

I made this quilt for Bill’s manager to celebrate the team boat trips. It incorporates photo printed cotton fabric photos and hand-dyed flannels in a raw edge quilt design. I really love how quickly these raw edge quilts come together.

There are 27 photos and 21 different colors of blue and green fabric.

Think Spring Quilts

julie — Sat, 06 Dec 2003 20:54:37 +0000

This quilt was inspired by a quilt in Batik Beauties.
Since both of our families live in cold climates we decided they needed lap quilts to remind them of spring and to keep them warm through the winter. We decided to take pictures of the beautiful flowers in Northern California, print them on fabric and incorporate them into a quilt. We combined the photo squares with hand-dyed cotton fabric for the front and flannel for the back.

These quilts were created with the help of Bill. We took several day trips around the bay area to find the right scenes to photograph. We took several dozen photos that we paired down to the 15 photos that we used. After creating 100 plus dyed color samples bill and I picked the 7 colors for the quilt that we felt complemented the photos we chose.

I decided to try free motion quilting with these quilts. This would be my first efforts at free motion and it did go fairly well. My machine didn’t always want to cooperate and gave me some problems with thread tension, but over all I was happy with the results.

I Stitched in the ditch around each photo and did a gentle curve in the mini checkerboard borders. Below are pictures of some of the quilting.

California Dreaming Quilt

julie — Tue, 06 May 2003 20:48:13 +0000

I have been wanting to start quilting for several years now. A good friend decided that she also wanted to learn to quilt. We decided to give each other a quilting class for Christmas 2002.

I decided that I wanted to capture the feelings of the water and foliage of California in my quilt. Never one to follow conventions, I decided that I needed to dye my fabric to get the look I wanted.

I took a 4 week introductory machine quilting class. We started with techniques for cutting and piecing our quilt. Next we learned how to create our quilt sandwich and machine quilt our quilt. The final task was to attach the binding and sleeve. I don’t think this quilt will win any blue ribbons, but I have learned a lot. The instructor gave us hints after we finished piecing on how to pin to get nicer corners, which I was able to use to make my borders line up nice. I need to practice quilting with my machine to get the right tension and needle selection for perfect machine quilting. All in all, I am very happy with the way my fabric and quilt turned out. Click here to see how the fabric was made.

Since I wasn’t sure if I would make many mistakes in my first quilt I dyed extra fabric. With all this extra fabric l decided to reduce the size of the quilt pattern and make two 20 inch pillows for us. They became quilts 2 & 3.

With 3 projects under my belt I decided to make some quilts for Christmas 2003 gifts.