Sunday, October 28, 2007

Playing with light

The last couple of bulbs that have blown in the light fitting our my longarm have taken out the fuse as well. The extra step or replacing the fuse means I don't replace the bulb so fast, yes I really am that lazy about some things. It did mean though that I got to see a quilt illuminated by the machine light alone, and it looked good. The quilting was so clear I couldn't believe it. So I waited for it to get dark last night and had a play with my camera. It's tricky fitting the tripod in, and I really needed it for some of the exposures I tried. I found that that inbuilt white balance was having a hard time compensating for the bulb on the machine, I guess there is something odd about the colour spectrum of it. It's probably the same thing that makes it so good for seeing what I am doing when I a quilting.

Anyway here are the results. The quilt on the frame belongs to Jenny Stafford of Patchwork Corner and is a sample for one of her kits. She is planning on taking it to the Malvern show next week to illustrate the kit, so it will be delivered early next week and I will show you the full quilt then. It is an all over pattern of swirling feathers. I've really come to enjoy this design after being quite scared of it for a while. The tape you can see is marked in inches which will give you some idea of the scale. The squares are quite small and I will have to ask her how it is done, as the pattern is quite intricate when you really look at it. I know Jenny though, there is bound to be a clever way of doing it.

Now as promised the picture of the sample I was working on at the shop on Thursday. This will be one of a set of three panels that form a wall hanging when I have trimmed it and bound it. I am not sure yet if I will quilt it. I have a couple of ideas for designs to put on it but I rather like it as is and in a wall hanging it should be OK without the wadding. I will probably leave my final decision until I have all the parts made an then see what they have to say about it. I prefer to listen to the quilt before deciding how to quilt it if I can.

Just in case it isn't clear this isn't just a piece of fabric. It is woven from strips of three different fabrics in the Glorious Geisha range.

2 comments:

Vicki W said...

Your quilting is beautiful! The next time you ahve trouble with the color balance, add a bit of grey (a card, piece of fabric, faded denin jeans) in your photo. The camera wants to turn something grey. Then just crop the grey out when you edit the photo. The woven fabric is stunning.

Read your article in UP this morning - it was very interesting!

Ferret said...

Oh cool it made it in then. I haven't got my copy yet but hopefully it won't be long.

Thanks for the tip about grey I will giev that a go sometime.