Bottom line:  if you take digital pictures, enter quilt shows, want to print photos onto fabric, want to print photos from your printer at home, want to design quilts on the computer, or learn to manipulate photos, or learn to use your photo editing software more effectively, want to know how to get the color in the photo to look like it does in real life, and THEN want the print to have the same colors…. BUY THIS BOOK!  This book will be an essential reference tool in my library, I can tell already.  It is not a sit down and drool over the pictures book, but it is a book you will use again and again and again!

The caveat up front: Gloria is the one person I wanted to design my website, and she and Derry did a fantabulous job.  That probably makes me slightly biased, but as anyone on  the QuiltArt e-list knows, Gloria’s knowledge (and generous sharing of that information) on the list are such that most of us have an e-mail folder entitled “good stuff from Gloria”!

The subtitle to this information-packed book is “the quilt maker’s must-have guide to images, files and more!”.  I couldn’t agree more….   for both MAC and PC uses, Digital Essentials is written by Gloria Hansen, who is not only an award-winning quilter (major ribbons at both AQS and Houston in the past year alone!), but also an award-winning website designer with her partner Derry Thompson of Gloderworks, and a top-notch photographer. In just browsing the book when it first arrived, I learned stuff, was impressed with how well laid-out the book is, and how Gloria makes a seemingly complex subject understandable.   Digital Essentials is published by the Electric Quilt Company, ISBN 1-893824-64-0.  The book is available by mid-September from Gloria here, from Amazon, or ask your local quilt shop to stock it!

At first I intended to review this book in one fell swoop.  But….. There is SO much in the book, and as always I am so pressed for time, that I thought I’d do a synopsis of what is in the book, then later on work my way through a couple of the chapters that teach things I really want to know, and share the results with you as I can get the time to do the work.

The book is in four major sections:

1. The Fundamentals
2. Working with Images
3. Saving for the Web
4. Reference

Start at the beginning:

Let’s say it right up front:  computer lingo and camera lingo can be really daunting.  But I realized it is the same situation quilters face when dealing with art terminology.   I tell students in my “If you can write your ABCs, You can Draw” class, folks are intimidated by the vocabulary of art:  composition, complementary colors, tangents, value.  But it is just words.  We can all learn what they mean.   When we started quilting we probably didn’t know Log Cabin meant a block, not a building, and Baltimore Album was a style of quilting form the mid 1800s, not a photo album about Maryland!

And that’s how Gloria begins:  by explaining what all those not-really-daunting words mean.  Best of all, she uses pictures and pictures of drop-down screens from commonly used picture software to illustrate.  The book’s layout and color-blocking help organize the text, making it easy for you to scan and find what you need, as well.

Especially helpful are the red ovals on the screen shots which help you know WHERE on your screen to look!

Getting the color right…from real life to captured image to computer screen to print out… is key.  In Chapter 5, Gloria breaks down what to do into a step-by-step process.  I can tell that this isn’t something I want to do late at night when my biorhythms are at their worst, but I can also tell that if I simply take it one step at a time, I can do this…and there is no way I could have figured it out on my own (well, at least in this century).

The next two sections — images and the web:

I’ve learned some of the things in these sections by doing, by using Gloria’s help to me individually and to the QuiltArt list over the past four years.  But already I have learned there are different ways to crop things that may make my life simpler and faster (more time to quilt, or sleep! is a good thing).  As I have time to work with the book, I’ll come back to these topics.

Resources:

OH how I LOVE a book with a good index…. this one is four FULL pages, which means I can find what I want quickly, instead of having to flip through many pages….

There is a Reference Guide with commonly asked questions…and the pages on which to find the answers!

There is a comparison of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Paint Shop Pro, and also a glossary.  Let’s face it…we can read the definitions but they don’t always imprint (at least on my brain).  Having this mini-dictionary in the back is eminently helpful.

The last test:

I’ll challenge myself right here, in print.  I want to understand a few things.  Let’s see if I can find the answers in the book….

1.  What are layers and how can I use them?

2.  Can I manage to create a somewhat kaleidescopic image on my Mac laptop using Photoshop elements?

3.  How can I (easily?) watermark the photos I post to my website and blog?

4.  How do I get the colors of my photos to be the same as the actual cloth, so that entries accurately reflect the quilt?

5.  When I download photos from my camera to the laptop, why do they come out at 72 dpi and HUGE size (about 35×42 inches)?  I shoot at maximum resolution.  Can I adjust either the camera or the software so they display at 300 dpi and smaller size?

6.  What is Unsharp Mask????? And why do I need to use (or not use) it?

I’ll work through these questions over the next couple of months (I hope), and I’ll share my results.

Lowell, Massachusetts, seems to be a very art-friendly town and, given it’s history as a mill-town (lots of textile mills in upper New England in the late 1800s), quite open to the idea of art quilts.  The Brush is an artists’ co-operative and gallery.  Each year when the Lowell Quilt Festival happens, various venues around town have art quilt exhibits or related shows.  The Brush, along with the Whistler Museum of Art (as in James McNeil Whistler, most famous for his painting of his mother….), are two of the venues art quilters want to be in!  (Note:  photos in this post are clickable … you can right click to view larger in a window/tab.)  This quilt is Sod Wall I, by Elfa Jonsdottir of Worcester, Mass.  I’m not usually partial to this abstracted style of quilting, but I thought the use of the hand-dyed fabrics and color was particularly effective.

I got to meet Debbie Bein, Elaine and Mary from Toronto, all from the QuiltArt list, and to my great surprise and pleasure, my near-neighbor Carrie Hedstrom.  Carrie is a young mom of FIVE (ages 7 to two months…youngest was in a baby sling for the opening reception!)…how she finds time for art is beyond me, let alone time to get the entries done and sent in on time!  Somehow, I managed to miss taking a photo of them (I had just gotten out of class and RACED from Chelmsford, where the classes were held, to Lowell, where the show and galleries are, to be there before the reception ended!) or of Carrie.  But I did get this shot of the wall where Carrie’s quilt was hung, on the far left, and one that I think is Frieda Anderson’s on the far right:

Update:  Rosemary’s piece is titled “Sheer Floral.”  And, it is indeed Frieda’s work on the right, titled “SunSet Pines.”

I’ve only met Rosemary Claus-Gray online, but I love her work.  Sometimes it is abstract, but this representational piece in sheer fabrics is just glorious:

If you look closely at the photo, you can see the stretcher bars shadowing through the sheer fabrics!

I neglected to take a photo of the label on these two pieces… if anyone knows who made them, please let me know!   I love the use of thread in the satin stitching:

(Update:  the piece above, thanks to Cyndee who spotted an article in the Lowell newspaper, is Sun Moon Stars by Therese Bliss….thanks Cyndee!)

I’m giving a lecture on beading and embellishments on quilts, so I’m on the hunt for examples to use in my lectures.  I’ve photo’s the labels on all these pieces so I can contact the makers and ask permission to include the photos in my slide show…..  alas, this overall photo of Rachel B. Cochran‘s Imperial Palace didn’t turn out sharp:

but the detail photo did–I’m in love with her hand-dyes:

Margarete Steinhauer of Scituate, MA, created The Cork Oaks; she is a plant and environmental scientist, and was inspired by a piece of commercial dye-painted fabric.

In several days, I’ll share the quilts at the Whistler!  Cheers, Sarah

In mid-July a most delightful e-mail from blog-reader Evy V. in the Netherlands arrived, telling me that “I had to let you know I was very pleasently surprised to see a picture of your beautiful Koy Quilt in the French/Dutch magazine “Quiltmania” when they arrived at my store.”  WOW!   So I promptly surfed in to eQuilter, which I know carries the magazine (since of course no one within a 90 minute drive of Camden does).  They had only just received issue 65, and Koi is in 66…. so I checked last week, and my copy of issue 66 just arrived!

Here is the opening page of the article which, as I had guessed, was about the spring AQS show in Paducah, Kentucky; this show is one of the two most prestigious in the US (along with the IQA show in Houston), so I was thrilled Koi was juried in:

Note:  photos are clickable to get a larger, more easily viewed size.  In some browsers you can right click or, on a mac use the applekey + click, to open the photo in a separate window.

I was happy to see another Maine Quilter, Wendy Caton Reed, represented on the second page…her quilt won a top ribbon at Maine Quilts 2008 this year.  It’s the one in the center, red and yellow:

And here, drum roll, on p. 26, is Koi!

I’m in mighty good company…that quilt just above mine is one of the top prize winners by Diane Gaudynski!

After the many, MANY rejections I’ve had, it is heartwarming to know that out of the many, MANY outstanding quilts in Paducah, QuiltMania selected mine to include in the article!  Thank you to them, and to Evy for letting me know.  By the way, she is a quilt shop owner in the Netherlands, so click here to surf in, and I sure hope some day I get to VISIT her shop!

Well, I’m TOTALLY bummed.   BOTH my entries to the Journal Quilts exhibit were rejected this year, the first year that it has been juried.  There were 150 entries, 48 got in, none of which were mine.  They were GOOD.  Sigh.  I’m just depressed.  I know rejection is part of the game, but I’ve had so many rejections for so long, and the journals mean so much to me, that I was really hoping to get one in this year.  Guess not.  Sigh.

The journal quilts debuted in 2002 I think… the year I joined the QuiltArt list.  I have participated in the non-juried exhibit every year since.  This is the first year there were limits on how many quilts.  Karey selected FIVE of my journals for the Creative Quilting:  The Journal Quilt Project book, and even opened one section of the book with three of my journals because she liked them so much.  So I know my work isn’t awful.  Sigh.

I won’t share the rejects yet…. someone online is going to organize a “latecomers” online exhibit to debut about the time of the real exhibit, so I’ll send mine in to that.   Sigh.  I’m just bummed.   Really bummed.  Kinda makes me want to not quilt and not work.  I’ll get over it {grin}!  Actually, since I first wrote this I’m doing better… I’m going to enter them somewhere else… off to look for a venue!

I had the great good fortune to be invited to teach at Lowell Quilt Show earlier this month.  I’ll blog about one of my classes in a couple of days, but today I wanted to give you an overview, starting with this overview of the show, which is held in the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, which is northwest of Boston (about 45 minutes by car, I think….it’s about 3 1/2 to 4 hours from Camden, Maine). Note:  photos in this post are clickable to be viewed larger.

The vendors are on an upper level that surrounds the arena, so you get a bird’s eye view.  This photo was taken early on Sunday (hence the lack of crowd).   I got over to the show earlier in the week, after class was over, and was thrilled to spot my Koi quilt for the first time….when folks were looking at it!  I guess a white glove lady was near it a lot of the time to show the back (LOVE IT!):

I had not realized until shortly before the show that the 2007 journal quilts would be there (I am not sure if this viewing included all of them or not, but I think it did).

As always, the journals are a popular exhibit (sure hope one of my entries gets in this year… I need an acceptance!!! instead of a “sorry” letter!).  On Sunday, I was thrilled to see someone really looking at mine… my journal is quite subtle, not a grab-you-from-a-distance piece, so it was really rewarding to see someone drawn in and taking a long time to take it in…thank you to whoever you are in this picture!  I hope it is OK for me to have posted this photo of you:

Wow…just realized I never uploaded this quilt to my website… I’ll do that when we get back from vacation in a week or so!   There is a lot to it… it is about Hiroshima, peace and all that….

One of the best things about quilt shows is the teachers.  If you ARE one of the teachers, one of the best things about a quilt show is getting to hang out with the other teachers!  I was thrilled to run into Nancy Prince, whom I had briefly met in Paducah, Joanie Zeier Poole, Judy Cisneros, Nancy Brenan Daniel and others….. dinners were a GAS.  This first night we each and every one of us had lobster of some sort at the hotel restaurant:

Nancy lives in Arizona, so she decided to splurge, and ham it up a bit… I totally love this photo and need to send it to her before heading out on Wednesday (and yes, she did take the meat out of the shell before eating it LOL)

:

On Sunday I got to have breakfast at the locally famous Four Sisters Owl Diner, a real OLD diner, with good old fashioned cholesterol-heaven breakfast:

To my great astonishment and pleasure, I got an e-mail a couple days before leaving for Lowell informing me that I had won an honorable mention for Naiads!  After viewing the other quilts, I’m thrilled even more…. here’s  a picture of Naiads with the ribbon alongside and the “neighborhood”:

I taught Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so got to see the show on Sunday to my hearts’ content.  But even tired teachers wear out.  And get hungry.  So mid-afternoon I set out on the town to see the shows at the Brush Gallery, The Whistler (more on those two in future posts), and get some lunch.  I was fortunate to be able to wait to pick up Naiads and my teachers quilts (Koi and Garuda Dances Under the Ocean Moon) at 5:30, after show take-down (thereby saving a bundle on  shipping) before heading home.  So, while waiting, I had an iced coffee…perfect: