#10 Art Concepts for Quilting: Balance Part 1
2011/03/02

What is visual balance and how can it be attained? This article looked at two types of visual balance: symmetrical balance and radial balance.

#9 – Preparing Patches for Needle-turn Appliqué
2010/01/20 – ↓ from #5 last year!

Needle-turn appliqué is my favorite method of hand appliqué. I find it to be very accurate as well as flexible. But a big reason is the ease with which the patches are prepared beforehand. This article describes how I prepare the patches for needle-turn appliqué.

#8 – Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks Blog Tour
2009/11/04 – ↓ from #1 last year!

This special issue from Quiltmaker Magazine featured 100 blocks from today’s top designers. I was so excited that one of my block designs had been chosen for the magazine. My block was called Spring Snowflake.

#7 – More Squares and Rectangles in Quilts
2010/06/23 – ↓ from #6 last year!

I realized that my study of squares and rectangles in quilts was incomplete because the original article focused solely on traditional patchwork quilt block designs. This post presented some additional examples of quilts, this time in a more contemporary or art quilt style.

#6 – Embellishing Quilts #1: Decorative Stitching
2010/08/04 – ↓ from #3 last year!

Reviewing The Quilter’s Directory of Embellishments (Sally Holman, C&T Publishing 2006) inspired me to write a series of articles on ways that I have embellished some of my quilts. This post featured decorative stitching.

#5 – More Triangles in Quilts
2010/07/21 – ↑ from #8 last year!

The half-square triangle, or right angle triangle, may be the workhorse in traditional patchwork design but we shouldn’t overlook other types of triangles.  This article features equilateral, scalene, acute and obtuse triangles.  I suspect some of these types of triangles are used less frequently because they are not as easy to rotary cut and piece.  But with specialty rulers, templates or paper foundation piecing, they can be sewn just as easily and successfully as half-square triangles.

#4 – Geometric Shapes in Quilts: Hexagons
2010/10/20

The series on Art Concepts for Quilting, especially on the subject of shape, was very popular with five articles in the top ten.  This article focused on the hexagon.

#3 – Geometric Shapes in Quilts: Triangles
2010/07/14 – ↓ from #2 last year!

After squares, triangles are easily the most used geometric shapes in patchwork quilts.  More specifically, it is the right angle triangle – the half-square triangle – that quilters treasure.  This type of triangle was the subject of the third most-viewed blog post.

#2 – Geometric Shapes in Quilts: Squares and Rectangles
2010/06/16 – ↑ from #4 last year!

While considering how the element of shape is used in quilt design, we began with two similar geometric shapes: the square and the rectangle.

And the #1 Most-Viewed Blog Article from the past two years is…

Basting a Large Quilt in Sections
2011/02/16

Basting a large quilt can be a challenge, but I have found that working at it in sections makes the job very manageable. Obviously, many people wanted to know how!

Thank you for following my blog.  It’s been a fun couple of years and I look forward to many more!

]]> http://www.kathykwylie.com/blog/2011/11/two-years-of-blogging/feed/ 0 http://www.kathykwylie.com/blog/2011/09/pattern-spot/ http://www.kathykwylie.com/blog/2011/09/pattern-spot/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 03:45:00 +0000 kkwylie http://www.kathykwylie.com/blog/?p=2960 In August, C&T Publishing announced the launch of a new website called PatternSpot.com – the first online marketplace of its kind.  It is a place where quilters, sewers, and crafters can purchase and instantly download their favorite project patterns from talented designers.  Thousands of ePatterns, representing a wide variety of styles and skill levels, are all available together under one virtual roof.  This is exciting news for all of us fabric enthusiasts who want a shopping site with lots of diversity and inspiration, where we can get started quilting or sewing something as soon as the notion strikes.

There are plenty of great reasons to shop at PatternSpot.com for your next sewing or quilting project:

• Receive your pattern right away ~ Simply download the PDF file to your computer and get started.
• High resolution and color ~ To keep printing costs down, paper patterns are typically printed in black or grey scale and condensed to fit on a few pages.  ePatterns can be viewed in full color at whatever size you wish on your computer screen.  (See an example later in this article.)
• Huge selection all in one place ~ Where else can you shop from hundreds of different designers and browse from their latest and greatest sewing and quilting patterns?
• Search by keyword, theme, style, technique ~ With so many choices, you are bound to find the perfect pattern to fit your specific need.
• Preview pages ~ Most ePatterns on Pattern Spot offer a number of free preview pages to give you a bit more information and help you make your purchase decision.
• Save on the pattern price ~ ePatterns are typically 75% of the price of the equivalent paper pattern.
• No shipping or handling fees ~ This is a definite advantage over the typical on-line shopping experience.
• Environmentally friendly ~ Print only the pages you need, such as templates or paper-piecing foundations.
• Customer service and technical support ~ Pattern Spot has teams in place to help answer any questions you may have.

I currently have three ePatterns available at PatternSpot.com.  Part of the Stormy Seas series, each 27″ x 27″ wall quilt features a nautical-themed papercut design appliquéd onto a Storm at Sea block.  The paper pattern versions sell for $10(CA) on my website, or three for $25(CA), plus shipping; the ePatterns are $7.50(US) each at PatternSpot.com.  Full size templates are included either way.  Click on the quilts below to jump right to the preview page at PatternSpot.com.

Stormy Seas: The Lighthouse

Stormy Seas: The Sailboat

Stormy Seas: The Puffin

To see the difference between the traditional paper pattern and the PDF ePattern, here is the Fabric Requirements page (or back cover) of The Lighthouse quilt.

The back cover of the paper pattern is printed in grey scale to fit on a 5-½” x 8-½” sheet of paper.

The fabric requirements page is color-coordinated in the ePattern and even includes a key to identify the fabric placement in the Storm at Sea block.

C&T Publishing is enthusiastic about this newest venture – and so am I.  PatternSpot.com allows you to get creative and learn something new at a moment’s notice.  I hope you will visit there often and enjoy all that this exciting online marketplace has to offer.

There are many ways to go about tracing from a photograph, but I would like to show you how EQ7 – the popular quilt design software from The Electric Quilt Company – can help.

Let’s start with this picture of a daylily.  It can be found in the EQ7 photo library.

EQ7 has a feature that allows us to change the color depth in a photo.  Color depth is expressed in bits per pixel.  The more bits per pixel, the more colors that can be displayed.  This photo, at 24 bits per pixel, can represent 16,777,216 different colors!  But if we reduced the color depth to 4 bits per pixel, only 16 different colours would be displayed.  This would certainly make the photograph much easier to trace.

From the Image worktable in EQ7, choose “Increase/Decrease Color Depth…” from the IMAGE menu.  Decrease the bits per pixel to 4 and click OK.  The daylily photo now looks like this.  Can you see how much easier it would be to trace each individual shade of color in this altered photograph?

We can trace using EQ7 as well.  Save the altered daylily photo to your Sketchbook and then edit on the Block worktable.  It will appear on the “Tracing Image” tab, where you can adjust how light or dark you would like it to be.

Begin by tracing all the elements of one color that appear furthest away in the photo – in this case, the bright red flower petals.  Notice how three of the petals appear to overlap the other three.  Tracing the underneath petals first makes the process easier.

Here are the six flower petals colored.  Can you see now the importance of overlapping the petals in the correct order?

What’s next?  I would say the second darker shade of red.

Here is the colored version.

Continue tracing one color at a time, working from back to front, until the entire photo has been traced.

Here’s how it could look in a quilt!

EQ7 can also help with constructing your pictorial quilt.  Print the block as an appliqué pattern to any size, tiling over multiple pages if necessary.

You can also print templates for each patch.

Not comfortable with drawing on your computer?  It does take a little practice – and a graphics tablet doesn’t hurt either!  You can still use EQ7 to help you design your pictorial quilt.  Just print the photo after reducing the color depth and trace it by hand.

Scanning Fabric
To create an electronic version of real life fabric in your stash, you can scan it and import the file into EQ7.  Lay the fabric on your scanner bed and scan using your scanner software.

Set the resolution to 72 or 75 and crop the scanned image to approximately 3″ x 3″, following the pattern repeat in the fabric as closely as possible for best results.  Save as a jpg or bmp file.

Fabric on the Internet
In addition to scanning fabric yourself, you can also find images of fabric swatches on the internet.  These can be saved to your computer as a jpg or bmp file by right-clicking on the image and choosing “Save Picture As…”. 

Most fabric manufacturers and on-line retail stores display images of fabric on their websites.  Moda Fabrics, however, has gone one step further.  They provide the option to download jpg images of their fabric collections with a simple mouse click.

Importing Fabric into EQ7
Once you have fabric saved as a jpg or bmp file (gif, png, and tiff are also supported), the file can be imported into EQ7.  Go to the Fabric Library and click Import>From Image Files.  Select the fabric files to import and click Open.  The new fabric swatches are now ready to be added to your Sketchbook.

FAB Fabric Files
Computer files in the format .fab are fabric files that are formatted for EQ software.  Once these files are saved and linked to EQ, they are available directly from the Fabric Library.

Connecting Threads provides FAB files for their latest fabric collections.  Download and extract the zipped file, then save the FAB file in My Documents\My EQ7\user on your hard drive.  The fabric will appear in “My Libraries” in the Fabric Library.

The Electric Quilt Company also offers free FAB fabric files to download.  A new collection is added each month, with each FAB file containing six months.  Download and save the FAB file in My Documents>Monthly Libraries on your hard drive.  Once this folder is linked to EQ, the fabric will appear beneath the pre-loaded EQ7 fabrics in the Fabric Library.

STASH
If all that is not enough, you can purchase even more EQ fabrics.  STASH Fall 2010 includes over 4600 new fabrics from 28 different fabric manufacturers.  Imagine!

November 2009
The impetus for getting my blog up and running was a blog tour hosted by Quiltmaker Magazine.  As a result, the #1 most viewed page over the past year is the November 12th post featuring my block in the Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks Special Issue Magazine.  It also generated the most comments.  What a great way to get started!

That month, I introduced my new quilt project and wrote my first how-to article on using a focus fabric to choose fabrics for a quilt.

December 2009
The month began with a product review of the Easy Edge Appliqué Tool, and then switched gears to Christmas.  I described the Christmas ornaments I make each year as gift tags, showed some of the ornaments I have made for my tree, and revealed my annual ornament for 2009.

January 2010
The New Year began with a review of 2009.  At the end of that article, I said that I would share my goals for 2010 in a future article.  Did you notice that I never did?

That month, I revealed sections 2 and 3 of the center panel in my quilt Flourish on the Vine.  My second how-to article on preparing patches for needle-turn appliqué was the #5 most viewed page, thanks to being picked up by a quilting site.  The #9 most viewed page followed with a look at my favorite appliqué marking tools.

February 2010
I am often asked if I sleep, so I wrote about that in February!  We saw sections 4 & 5 of Flourish on the Vine as well as a beautiful Sewflakes quilt design by one of my students.  The #10 most viewed page described the making of the quilt “Trinity”.  Every patch in that quilt was dyed by printing its unique color formula onto pre-treated fabric sheets using my inkjet printer.

March 2010
Writing about the quilt “Trinity” led to a four part series about printing fabric:  part 1 on dyeing fabric; part 2 on photo transfer; and parts 3 and 4 on scanning and printing.  A lot of information on this topic is included in my lecture Computer Aided Quilting.

April 2010
The month began with an article describing my experiences as an artist-in-residence at a local high school.  Section 6 of my quilt “Flourish on the Vine” was revealed, followed by a how-to article on partial seams in hand appliqué – a technique I have used a lot in that quilt.  The final post was written in Calgary Alberta, where I was attending Quilt Canada.

May 2010
More on Quilt Canada followed in the first article of May, then we learned about ways to avoid shadowing in our quilts.  The final two sections of my quilt Flourish on the Vine were unveiled, but have you noticed that I still haven’t shown you the entire completed center panel?  Stay tuned.

In May, I set up a Facebook page and wrote a post about this social networking site.  I have enjoyed maintaining this page, especially the Student Gallery photo album!

June 2010
June saw the introduction of a new series on art concepts for quilting.  We began with the element of shape, and spent two weeks looking at the geometric shapes of squares and rectangles.  The first post was the #4 most viewed page and the second one was #6.

At the end of June, I received my EQ7 upgrade and wrote about some of the new features in this popular quilt design software.

July 2010
More new features in EQ7 were discussed in July, then we returned to geometric shapes in quilts.  This must be a popular topic, because the first article on triangles was the #2 most viewed page and the second one was #8.  The final article that month was a book review on The Quilter’s Directory of Embellishments.

August 2010
Reading that book prompted a series on embellishing quilts.  Part 1, on decorative stitching, was the #3 most viewed page.  Part 2 looked at embellishing quilts with ribbon, braid and cord.

I missed a week in August while I was vacationing in Boston.  As it happened, the World Quilt Show XIV opened in Manchester NH that week – a mere one hour drive away!  My article on the Canadian exhibit and winners was the #7 most viewed page.

September 2010
We completed the series on embellishing quilts in September.  Part 3 looked at fabric manipulation, part 4 at embellishing with buttons and beads, and part 5 at art media.  Then we celebrated with local quilt shop Quilters Cupboard in Uxbridge for being featured in the Fall/Winter 2010 issue of Quilt Sampler® magazine.  Finally, I shared my entry into the 2010 IQA silent auction. 

October 2010
All summer long, I worked on the borders of my quilt Flourish on the Vine.  The first two articles in October described the swags in the borders:  part 1 outlined the challenges I faced and part 2 explained how I addressed those issues.

Then, after a long hiatus, we returned to art concepts in quilting with three articles on hexagons.  We saw examples of quilt designs and fifteen quilt blocks featuring the hexagonal shape.  Last week (the first week in November), we saw what happens when hexagons are divided into six triangles or three diamonds.

Happy Anniversary!

I hope you have enjoyed my blog so far and that you have learned many useful things to help you along your quilting journey.  There were times when I wondered if I might run out of ideas to write about, but one idea just seemed to lead to another.  You can expect lots more to come in the series on art concepts for quilting, including an inside look at a quilt design focus group that I have joined.  As always, I welcome your thoughts and your comments – thanks for reading!

Swath Tool
This tool is found on the Appliqué tab in the Block Worktable.  Here’s how it works.  You draw a path…

and then EQ7 fills in the path with either diamonds…

or flying geese!  Pretty cool, right?

I read an article about curved flying geese that stated they were quite easy to construct using paper foundation piecing.  Paper foundations are available from the Print Menu, so I checked to see how EQ7 would handle this curved flying geese unit.  Beautiful!

Serendipity Tools
These tools are found in the Block Menu.  EQ6 included three serendipity tools (which I may have noticed before, but just forgot):  Frame Block, Tilt Block, and Merge Blocks.  EQ7 adds four more and they’re pretty fun.

Click & Flip Blocks
This tool takes the top left corner of a block and flips it around to create new combinations.  Watch what it does with this Maltese Cross block.

Shrink & Flip Blocks
This tool shrinks a block to one quarter and uses that to create new combinations.  Here’s what happens with an Hourglass block.

Kaleidoscope Blocks
This one is very cool.  It uses a triangular portion of a block to create new combinations.  Here’s our Maltese Cross block again, followed by an Orange Peel block.  Amazing!

Fancy Star Blocks
This tool fits a block into a diamond shape, and uses those diamonds to create a star.  You can choose how many points in the star – between 5 and 10.  Here are the same two blocks in an eight-pointed star.

There’s a lot more to see and do in EQ7 – these are just a few highlights.  If you would like to learn how to use this amazing quilt design software, watch for my fall schedule and two EQ7 classes coming soon.

The first thing you’ll probably notice when you open EQ7 is a new worktable.  In EQ6, we had two worktables:  one for working on blocks and one for working on quilts.  In EQ7, there is now a third worktable for working on images.

EQ6 Two Worktables

EQ7 Three Worktables

What can you do on the image worktable?  Tons of stuff!  EQ7 offers the kind of image editing capabilities you find in programs such as Corel Photo-Paint and Adobe Photoshop Elements.  (See my previous articles on Printing Fabric, Part 2 and Part 4.)  You can crop, resize, and rotate.  You can adjust the colors, automatically or using the many color tools.  You can apply a wide variety of special effects. 

You can also create fabulous kaleidoscopes from your images using the circular or square symmetry tools.  This reminds me of the Kaleidoscope Kreator software I mentioned in a previous article.  All your image editing can be done within EQ7 and saved to your Sketchbook, ready to use in a quilt design.  So let’s try it.  Here’s a photo of a morning glory:

Let’s apply a square symmetry…

and change the photo into this:

Next, we’ll set the image in a quilt…

and start adding borders.  Now here’s something really neat:  the Eyedropper tool can find a matching color or a matching fabric from a color in the photo!  Isn’t that cool?

Here are a few quilt designs:

There’s one more amazing thing I have to show you.  It’s a new quilt layout called Photo Patchwork.  Here’s the morning glory photo overlaid with a square patchwork grid.

The grid doesn’t show up very well in the illustration, but watch this.  EQ7 will fill in each square with solid colors…

or with matching fabrics!

How cool is that?!  There are still more great new features in EQ7 I’d like to tell you about, but I guess they’ll have to wait until next week.  If you haven’t ordered EQ7 or your EQ7 upgrade yet, what are you waiting for?

If you are like me, you may have thought of Facebook as something for teenagers.  But then I started to notice businesses – quilt shops, magazines, publishers – adding links to Facebook on their websites.  That’s when I discovered Facebook Pages.

A Facebook Page is a public profile for sharing a business or product with Facebook users.  Because users are connected with their friends, when they interact with a Facebook Page, they spread the word to a wider circle of people.  But even visitors without a Facebook account can view the content of the Page.

My Facebook Page, called Kathy K. Wylie Quilts, was published just a few days ago.  So far, I have created three photo albums.  Sewflakes Quilts features twelve quilts designed with the Sewflakes: Papercut Appliqué technique.  The other albums display Award Winners or quilt designs with Patterns Available.

The Wall tab displays a running commentary of all the activity on the Page, including any new posts on the blog or on Twitter.  Facebook users can also add their comments or select things they like without leaving a comment.

It will be interesting to see how the Page evolves over time.  I will say, however, that all of the content will pertain to quilts or quilting.  I hope you will visit, add your comments, and share it with your friends!

Well, take this fruit fabric as an example.  Suppose I wanted to use it as part of a quilt label. 

Instead of sewing a border onto my label, I could scan the fabric and print it all in one.

Or, I could apply an effect called transparency.  I could continue to lighten the fabric until text would be visible on it.

This effect works really well if you want to use the same fabric as the quilt backing for your label.

Once our fabric is scanned, we can apply image editing tricks to it as well.  Take this animal fabric, for instance.

We could isolate the chicken…

We could turn him to face in the other direction…

We could turn him pink!

We could make him tall and skinny…

Or short and squat…

And we could put them all together in a funky chicken nine-patch block!

And these are just a few ideas of what you could do.

Calendars
Don’t you always keep your old Lang or Pine Ridge Art calendars, because the pictures are too beautiful to throw away?  This image, by Sam Timm, was featured in October 2004.

Here it is, scanned and printed to fabric, and then thread painted.

Wallpaper
This is the wallpaper in my diningroom.

I could scan the wallpaper border and print it to fabric…

and then make a table runner for my diningroom table.

Scrapbooking Paper
When I first encountered scrapbooking paper, it reminded me of fabric!  Why not turn it into fabric?

This wall quilt features the scrapbooking paper scanned and printed to fabric.