One Piece at a Time

Ireland: Land of Tea Shops

You don’t have to be in Ireland very long before you realize that there are tea shops everywhere. Every site we visited had a tea shop of some form or another. We even went on a hike up to a waterfall and, sure enough, at the end..a tea shop. I guess they are a little but like museum cafeterias except that they are so much better. We quickly realized as far as eating went this was the way to go. For a nominal price you could get a really great sandwich (tomato, cheese and onion was my favorite) a pastry and, of course, a pot of tea. You gotta love a place that believes every outing deserves a cup of tea. My favorite was the one in the castle.

Not Quite Ready for High Definition

Due to my recent web activities I found that I needed a …gasp…picture..of ..myself. The one I had been using was over 8 years old and very poor quality. So, intrepid amateur photographer that I am I plopped myself down in front of my Studio Gray background ( Annie Liebovitz eat your heart out) and snapped a picture (several really but I don’t want to talk about THAT). When I went to view this picture on my computer monitor I have to admit I was a little shocked. It might not look so bad here because of the smallness, but imagine it on a large monitor, yeesh.You see due to my bad eyes and being middle aged I normally look like this.

I don’t think I had ever seen myself in such horrifying detail ever before. So, I was faced with the unhappy decision between going to the spa and having my pores forcefully closed and my wrinkles scrubbed off OR learn some more Photoshop skills ( Photoshop Elements 6 actually). I opted for Photoshop. I’m just not a spa kind of girl. Luckily, Photoshop has some really great tools that can soften up your skin tone without making you look to freaky. Here’s my speed skin spa treatment.

The first step is to make a copy of your picture. To do this in PSE 6 press Ctrl-J.

With this copy layer selected go to the Filter menu along the top and select Blur then Gaussian Blur from the menu. When prompted for the radius value, start with 6. You might need to play around with this depending on the resolution of your image.

Now, you want to create a blank layer underneath the layer you just added the blur filter to. To do this Ctrl-click the New Layer button in the layers menu. You will then want to group these two layers together. To do this press ALT while you hover the mouse between the blurred layer and the blank layer in the layers palette. When you see two interlocking circles click to group these two layers. At first this will look like the original image. Our goal is to reveal the blurred layer only in the places where we want it without messing with the high detail areas.

To allow the blurred areas to show through you will need to paint on the blank layer with black. Don’t worry this isn’t as scarry as you think. When you paint in black on a blank layer PSE allows the blurry layer on top to show through but masks the detail areas. Let’s start. First, set your foreground color to black by pressing D. Select the brush tool and select a medium sized soft edged brush from the options bar. Now, making sure your blank layer is selected paint away on the areas of skin you want softened. As you do this you will see a nice blurriness as you paint. This takes some patience and you might need to zoom in and out a little and change your brush size to get the whole job done. Here’s my picture in progress. It still looks a little fake but we can fix that in the next step.

Once you have all the wrinkles and blotches adequately blurred you can vary the opacity on this painted layer to get the right amount of skin softening. I dialed mine down to @ 50%.

Now with a little digital dental work (a topic for another post) here something a little more Hi-Def friendly.

Quilt Lab: Quilt-in-a Day Triangle Square Up Ruler

Welcome to my second installment of Quilt Lab. Today I want to show you Quilt-in-a Day’s Triangle Square Up Ruler. Those Quilt-in-a-Day people do have some really great tricks and this ruler is one of my favorites. It  can be used to make Half Triangle Square units in any size imaginable and with it’s clever diagonal lines you use the seam to cut the final size so all your units are..basically…perfect. What’s not to like.

Here we go. First chose the size unit you need and cut two squares of fabric in the recommended size. Place those squares right sides together and two lines on each diagonal.

Sew a ¼” seam on each side of both drawn lines (sorry forgot that picture) then cut the unit into four equal parts. Also cut along each drawn line.

For the first trimming step line up the recommended line on your seam

And cut along each side.

To remove the points, turn the unit over, place the same line on the seam and cut.

Press seam to desired side when done and now you have a perfect Half Triangle Square.

Rio Has a Friend

One of the things I’ve worked on most with our new puppy Rio is socialization. Our last dog absolutely hated other dogs and it was a real pain. Lucky for us Rio has no problem with other dogs, especially Dodger the dog next door.

I’ve recently noticed Rio spending A LOT of time outdoors and coming in covered in dirt. Finally today I stalked him from my kitchen window. Rio is on a mission to dig himself into Dodger’s yard. He did this once when he was tiny but hasn’t made it under the fence in a while. This might be because the vet says he’s fat but I think he’s just large boned. I think Dodger hangs out on the other side just to pay with him. Here they are having a little puppy play session. No wonder he’s such a mess.

Northern Ireland's Antrim Coast

The places we visited in our recent trip to Ireland were jam packed with spectacular seaside views. We even had a fantastic ocean view from the kitchen of our little cottage. Some of the most spectacular sites were found along the north coast of County Antrim. This is in Northern Ireland so if you go, bring Pounds not Euro’s.

Our First stop was the ruins Dunluce Castle; a medieval castle perched along the Antrim coast.

Second, was the Giant’s Causeway. This is a magnificent out cropping of basalt, all formed into hexagonal columns of various heights.  Legend has it that the causeway was built by Finn MacCool as a way to get to Scotland without getting his feet wet.

Our last stop was Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. This rope bridge links the mainland to the tiny Carrick Island. It’s scary to cross but well worth the view.

Of course, in true Irish fashion, all stops had a tea shop. You gotta love that.

Playing with Texture

I have to admit my favorite photography subjects are flowers. What’s not to like? They are generally cooperative, don’t require bribery for posing and you usually don’t have to travel half way around the world to find them. Take these lovely poppies for instance. I found them in the garden surrounding, of all places, the local hardware store.

Here is a trick I learned recently in a class at JessicaSprague.com.

First, here is the picture straight out of the camera. (SOOC)

Although it looks overexposed I thought I would see what effects I could get with a texture layer. A texture is basically any JPEG file that can be added as a layer in Photoshop. Anything can be used really. The trick is to adjust the blending mode in the layers palate. Blending modes tell Photoshop how each layer will interact with the layers below it. For my poppies I used a combination of textures I bought from Ash Imagery each blended in a different way.

Here is another example of a previous post’s photo with a texture added.

As you can see there are tons of interesting artistic effects you can achieve with this simple trick.

Quilt Lab: Flying Geese Ruler

For all you quilters out there today I am introducing a new category called Quilt Lab. In this section I hope to show you some of the tricks I have learned over the years and some of the gadgets I have found that make quilting easier. Today’s topic is the Quilt-in-a-Day Flying Geese ruler. For those of you who have struggled with cutting off the points in your Flying Geese units this ruler is for you. It has somewhat complicated directions but in the end you will have flying geese with perfect ¼” allowances so no more lopped off point. So, here we go.

For each size Flying Goose unit you will cut two squares of different sizes (follow package directions for your particular size) Center the smaller square on the large square, right sides together, and draw a diagonal line.

 

Sew a ¼” seam on each side of this drawn line.

Cut the unit in two along your drawn line.

Press the seams toward the larger triangle.

Now, take two of these units and line them up as shown. Draw a diagonal line and sew a ¼” seam on either side of this line.

 

 

Cut the unit apart along the drawn line.

Clip the seam allowance of the most recent seam between the other two seams as shown.

Press so that the large triangle open and flat.

Each ruler has the ability to make two different sizes of flying geese. Here I am making the smaller size. Use the triangle marked on the ruler to cut the top and first size of the unit.

Turn the cut unit over and align the ruler to cut the bottom and second side.

Viola, a perfect Flying Goose.

Bogside Murals

When I started this post I was going to blather on about Derry and the Bloody Sunday massacre but then I figured that if you really want to read about that you can go here. The Bogside Murals in Derry are a very moving commemoration of the path to peace in Northern Ireland.

This picture actually brought tears to my eyes. The girl in the mural was shot playing outside after school. She was 14. My daughter was 14 when we were there…hits a little close to home doesn’t it?

Triangle Therapy

After over 20 years of quilting it still amazes me how therapeutic it is to just sew a bunch of triangles together. When my kids were smaller it seemed like the only thing I could do that they couldn’t undo was make a quilt. Now that they are older they tell me that when they imagine the safest most soothing place it’s always on the sofa cuddling with a quilt. I guess that’s enough pay-back for me.

Pig Out on Tennis

Well, US Open Tennis started today. I can feel it coming, the urge to lie prostrate on the sofa and watch scandalous amounts of tennis. You see I come from a tennis family. I have only a few pictures of my mom and they are almost all of her playing tennis or watching tennis. Every vacation revolved around tennis, either playing or watching. This picture of my mom and I was, I think, at Wimbledon. Our family made a pilgrimage to Wimbledon in 1976. Bjorn Borg won it for the first time that year and I had a HUGE crush on him. Kinda dates me, I know.