One Piece at a Time

Tulip Tutorial

Since tulips are making an appearance in some of my more recent quilts I thought I made do a speedy tulip tutorial. After nearly tearing all my hair out over tulips for my quilt Bluebird’s Piece O’Cake I decided that those side petals could very easily be combined into one piece. Here’s how I did it:

Here is a tulip from Miss Kay.

From here I made two templates like this.

On the larger piece, I clipped the inner curves.

Then I starched and pressed my shapes.

And glued them.

Here is a very rough diagram of how I sew these down. Doing it this way means I can usually get them done with one strand of thread.

Hope that helps!

Pop Up Posies update

This will be in the shop on Monday.

Right Now

Things are not looking good here in Colorado.

I took this picture on my way home from the grocery store yesterday. This fire is right behind where my husband works. Some dear friends were evacuated and are staying in our basement. So now we are at 8 people and 3 dogs.

Colorado Springs is having a severe emergency. 32,000 people were evacuated last night and the fire there doubled in size over night.

We could use some rain...without the lightning...please.

OK, I finally did it

Last week my cell phone/mommy radar died. I had been anticipating this so I wasn’t surprised. Everyone else in my family has a smartphone and I have to admit, I see the appeal. If I had known how handy they were for keeping organized I would have insisted on the kids getting them a lot sooner than they did.

I finally got tired of the dead battery alarm going off every 4 hours and marched myself over to the store and bought myself an iphone. I even bought the one with Siri so I could annoy the pants off everyone within 100 yards of me. Siri did save me from running out of gas however so I’m happy with her.

I went straight to the app store so I could download Instagram. The way I figure it, now I can make funky collages of my photos…just like quilting, only faster.

Finally Done

Here is a shot of my latest quilt design, Pop Up Posies. I’m busy writing the instructions as we speak…well, more like as you read. I’m hoping to have this in the shop on Friday. This will be a digital download and I just discovered a really great thing...I can make these interactive. Basically that means that if you are reading the pattern on a computer screen you can click on various links to my blog for more in depth instructions. Woo Hooo!!!! All parts will also be printable too.

Design Wall Monday…looking for MORE feedback

 

Good morning everyone! I hope you all had a pleasant weekend free from wildfires and natural disasters. We here in Colorado are under a blanket of smoke due to a horrible outbreak of wildfires. If you are the praying type, I’m hoping you can shoot off a prayer or two for rain here, please. Thank you.

My design wall today is really just a shot of my desk blotter…and..yes, I do design quilts on my desk blotter…as well as napkins, dry erase boards and church bulletins. You just never know when the inspiration is going to strike and I find myself doodling on the first available scrap of paper. Once I had a really great drawing on a grocery store receipt.

These are just some ideas bouncing around in my head. Which brings me to my next point. I got some feedback a while ago that people might be hoping for some designs OTHER than birds and flowers. I’m hoping maybe some of you would like to chime in on what you might like to see quilt designs of. So if you have a great piece of inspiration or something you just plain love, let me know and I will see what I can do.

Here’s a preliminary list:

1. Houses

2. Animals

3. Elephants…I’m having a bit of an elephant things here

4. ????? I really want to know what you guys want

Head on over to Judy's Blog for some more Monday inspiration!

And the winner is Rebecca

Who didn't have any silly pet names which is totally fine. The rest of you more than maid up for it. I am still laughing.

Use Photoshop Elements to create Simple Quilt

Before we get too far along with this tutorial I want to talk about using the GRID in PSE. PSE allows you to turn a grid on and off and allows you to “SNAP” to the grid (just and easy way to make sure things line up)

You can check your grid settings by going to the EDIT menu at the top left. From here click preferences and from there click GRID. A menu will pop up where you tell PSE how many divisions you want your grid to have. I usually have mine set to Grid Every 1 inch and subdivisions is set at 8. Once that is done click OK.

Now to turn your grid on and off you can go to VIEW along the top menu bar. To turn the grid on, make sure there is a check next to GRID. Also from this same menu, go down to SNAP TO and select GRID to turn this feature on.

Phew, now on to the fun stuff. Just like yesterday open both the Block picture and the quilt background PSD document just like yesterday. You can go between these 2 files by clicking them along the bottom of the workspace. To start with bring your quilt block up on the work space. Now you want to copy this to the quilt background. To do this use your MOVE tool (top of the left tool bar) and click on the block and drag it onto the Quilt Background document on the bottom. When you do this you will go to the quilt back ground document and the blcok will be on it.

Here you can use your MOVE tool to move your block all around. Place it somewhere in the upper left corner.

Now let’s have some fun making copies. Once you have your block placed. Using your MOVE tool click on the block HOLDING DOWN the ALT key at the same time. Another copy of you block will appear.

Now is the time to play. Create multiple copies of your block and arrange them on your background. If you want to make things line up, make sure your grid is on. Here I have created a quilt with 9 blocks.

You will notice that every time you create a new copy of the block a new layer appears in the right hand Layers menu. Once you are ready to finalize your design you can select all your layers by CNTRL Clicking on each individual layer. Once they are all highlighted you can right click and chose merge. This will merge the image into one layer that you can save just like a picture.  I realize that the blocks are a little small compared to the background. Here I cropped it just the same way as I did yesterday except I used a 5” x 5” crop from the Aspect Ratio drop down menu at the top of the workspace.

Here it is all saved like a picture.

OK, so that was very technical. Sometimes when I am learning something new like this it feels like someone is speaking to me in a foreign language. If you feel this way it really helps to PRACTICE.

If your head is just spinning, check out Jessica Sprague’s wonderful classes. There is even a get started for free section. Just go to:

http://www.jessicasprague.com

 

I will be picking the Miss Kay winner later today.

Quilt Design with Photoshop: getting started

Hello friends. First off I just want to say that the Miss Kay pattern give-away is still going so you are not too late to leave a comment (on the previous post) and have a chance to win.

Here is the first tutorial on how to use Photoshop Elements (PSE) to design quilts. What’s great about today is that I’m going to show you a little design trick that I worked out that will get you going really fast.

When I am first designing a new quilt I draw my design on plain old paper. I’m currently learning to use some more advanced drawing tools but nothing is quite as satisfying as pencil/pen on paper. Here is a shot of the design I’m starting with. You can just ignore that funky border, it’s for another tutorial.

Once I’m happy with the design I make myself some templates out of Templar or heat resistant mylar.

Here's the BIG CHEAT…Today I am going to make it out of paper. I found these papers at a scrapbooking store and I thought they would work just great….perfect “Erin” colors.

I use my templates to trace the designs and then I just glue the pieces down to a 12” x 12” piece of cardstock, also from the scrapbooking store. Here I have taken a picture of it taped to my bulletin board. You will want to do this so your shot is as flat as possible.

Now we are going to open the picture with our software. Once PSE is running, go to the top upper left and select FILE. Then OPEN. A  window will appear where you can click on your picture to open it. Here is my picture open in PSE. (When you see these screen shots, if you click on them they can be seen a bit better)

Now it’s time to crop it so that it looks like a quilt block. To do this, click on the crop tool on the left side of the workspace. After that, type 2 inches into the width and height boxes along the top. Type 300 in the resolution box.

Starting at one corner of your mock quilt block, click and drag the crop tool to the opposite corner. The area being cropped out will become darker. You can use your curser as well as the arrow keys on your keyboard to move this box around. When you are happy that the design is centered in the cropping box, click on the green arrow to crop the image. Ta Da…you now have a quilt block…wink wink.

The next step is to create your quilt background. To do this you will have to create a new file called a PSD file (Photoshop Document). To do this go to the FILE button on the top left (same one where you opened your picture) and click NEW then BLANK FILE. From here a menu will pop up. A good starting size is 12” x 12”. Type 12 into width and select inches next to that. Do the same thing for height. For resolution, type 300 and select pixels/inch from the drop down menu next to that. Also, make sure that color is RGB color and that background is white.

Since I am working with a block on a white background, I want to fill this layer with a color so it will be easy to see my individual blocks. To do this I click on EDIT. Then I check FILL LAYER. In the menu that pops up I pick COLOR in the box that says Choose. When you do this a color picker box pops up. You can chose your color here by clicking anywhere along the rainbow and then picking a color in the box that pops up. Make sure that preserve transparency is NOT checked.

There now you have a quilt block and a quilt background to start playing with. Next time I will show you how to do a simple straight setting with these blocks. Make sure you save these two thing for future use.

Since this is my first time doing these tutorials any and all feedback is welcome. Please give these steps a try and let me know how it goes. Leaving feedback in the comments would probably be best. That way I can see where you are having difficulty and address it on the blog. Chances are people will have similar issues.

Oh and I almost forgot, that super cute flower that I made my block from...wink...you can download to practice with:

Download Practice Posie

Blog Commenting Strangeness

Several readers have alerted me to the fact that the blog is acting strange in the comments/links area.

Try leaving your comments from the last post here to enter to win a new Miss Kay. For those of you who have already ordered, please fell free to enter. I will refund you if you win...and THANK YOU!