Center focus on center of quilt. Note hotshoe bubble level.

I just read a fabulous article on photographing your artwork here, at textileart.org.  I highly recommend it!   I was thrilled that they link to Holly Knott’s instruction page for textile artists and art quilters, and they also had embedded a very useful YouTube video put up by the folks at Saatchi Online (see the video at the bottom of this post).  Those posts inspired me to share with you how I do my own photography.

I’ve become adept at photography through self-education and practice, and you can too.  My photographs have been used in my book (AQS even gave me a photography credit!), in Quilting Arts magazine (which has some of the best photography out there), Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine, and a number of Lark Books including 500 Art Quilts, so I think I’ve reached proficiency–at least with the best of my shots.  Here’s a little of what I do in hopes that it will help you!

Set-up and level:  In the photo above, I’ve shown how I set things up in my studio.  I am very fortunate to have a LARGE (vast!) design wall, which I had built and installed when we moved into this house three (!!!) years ago.  I can pin my quilts to the wall and photograph them easily.  If you don’t have a design wall, you can create a temporary set-up easily and inexpensively:  purchase either foam core or rigid foam insulation.  Place the foam core or insulation flat (or as flat as you can get) against the wall (poster tacking putty may be helpful).   If you have to tilt the board, make sure the camera lens is parallel to the surface (see the Saatchi video, at the bottom of this post).

Hotshoe bubble level and first screen on my camera. The hotshoe (if your camera has one) is where one attaches a separate flash mechanism. On my camera, it is on top of the built-in flash. These small bubble levels are inexpensive, about $15. Mine will show you level whether the camera is positioned in landscape or portrait orientation.

I purchased a small “gizzie,”  a bubble level that fits into the camera hotshoe (the place where one attaches a separate flash) of my camera so that I can be sure that the camera is perfectly parallel to the vertical wall and also level, because my basement floors definitely are not perfectly level.  I purchased my camera level from B&H Photo Video, a vast emporium (a real store and online) for all things photo and video; they have really expert sales people who can help you with expensive decisions (like a DSLR!) and great prices.  They are a Jewish business, so they close for the Sabbath (Friday to Saturday evenings) and holy days, so check on the website for special closings.  Otherwise, they are there.  Type “Camera level” into the search box on the site to find their current offerings.  If my eyes are telling me one thing and the hotshoe level is saying another, I often use a small “torpedo” level to double check.  When I turn the camera to vertical on the tripod, because the barrel of the lens has ridges, I make certain the front of the lens is level (see photos below).

With this particular lens, I notice that the lower right corner isn’t sharp no matter what the focal length, so when I want ALL the quilt to be super-sharp, I allow extra room around the edges.

If you want to get REALLY obsessive (guilty!) you can make sure your quilt is exactly vertical using a small bubble level from the hardware store:

Making sure the sides of the quilt are vertical (or that the top is horizontal).

If you have the option, turn on a grid in the viewfinder. This will help you see if the now-truly-vertical sides of your quilt are parallel to the grid on the screen or at an angle. If they are at an angle, you can adjust the camera so everything is squared up correctly.

To obsess a bit more, you want to make sure that once the QUILT is vertical/level, that your camera LENS is also vertical/level.  The floors in my basement studio (painted that grass green!) are anything but flat and level.  So I triple check with not only the hotshoe bubble level, but I use the small red torpedo level (seen in the photo at the side of my quilt and below) to check if the camera LENS is vertical.  If the lens tips up or down, you will get distortion called keystoning, where a true rectangle appears wider at the top or at the bottom.

Using the bubble level on the top of the lens is a challenge because of the grip and changes in the surface.

Instead you can use the hotshoe bubble level to make sure the front of the lens is in fact truly vertical (assuming of course that your wall is truly vertical!)

OR

Distortion:  Through trial, error, and observation, I have learned that when I use my Nikon DSLR with the extra long zoom lens, the lower right of the lens has some distortion:  it just isn’t sharp in that lower right corner.  So when I set up and take photographs, I know that I need to have my tripod far enough away that I can avoid having a corner of the quilt in the not-so-sharp zone.  Next on my agenda:  take out the shorter zoom lens that came with the camera and see how that does.

A focal length on your zoom of about 50 is optimal. If your camera doesn’t tell you the focal length, just don’t do way zoomed in or really wide-angle.

Focal length:  I’ve also read that the optimal focal length for still photography like this is 50 mm (well, the digital equivalent of what 50mm was on old film cameras).  You definitely don’t want to go wide-angle because you will get distortion:  a square quilt will bulge out like a fish eye, the sides will appear to push out in the middle.  When I set up the tripod, I set the camera to 50mm, then I move the tripod so that the quilt fills the viewfinder (while avoiding that odd spot with my particular lens) but still allows me room to crop the photo in Photoshop Elements.

Center focus on center of quilt. Note hotshoe bubble level. Notice that the tripod is about ten feet back from the design wall and the quilt of Pigwidgeon dancing for supper nearly fills the screen, but avoids that lower-right area.

Tripod:  I cannot overstate how important it is to have a perfectly still camera.  As you push the button, your hand introduces shake to the camera.  My first tripod was purchased used for $27.  Yep, that inexpensive.   And photos from that set-up made it into books!  I eventually replaced with an “enthusiast” level tripod, but which still didn’t cost more than $150.  Since this is my business, it was a business deduction (and honestly, the only time I’ve ever used it for anything other than work is to film Eli at a few wrestling meets–I can videotape from the tripod and take still pics sitting on the floor!) and well worth it.  My tripod head has a built in bubble level on it, too, but I rely on the level on the camera to make sure the camera isn’t tilted on a level tripod.  If you don’t have a tripod, find a ladder, chair or other stable surface and put your camera on that.  Use the self-timer, press the button, then let the camera trigger the shot; this avoids wiggling from your hands pushing the button.

At the enthusiast level, tripods and heads are sold separately.   Some photography books urge you to buy a tilt-pan head, which swivels on a ball head.  I have found for photographing a quilt, I prefer the heads that allow you to level horizontally, then vertically, using two separate knobs.  I know that once I get horizontal level if I have to adjust for vertical, I would knock it out of level.  By having the head have two separate knobs, I can adjust in one direction, get it right and lock it in, then adjust for the other direction of level.

Tulip bulbs in inexpensive shop light reflectors. The bulbs cost about $35 each, so I store them carefully! But they are the most expensive part of your lighting set up and are still far less expensive than hiring someone to shoot your quilts! Unless you drop them, they last a long time.

Lighting is CRITICAL!   I followed the information on Holly Knott’s website (paragraph and links below) to purchase the tulip bulbs that give even light when correctly positioned.  I screw them into inexpensive shop fixtures from the big-box hardware stores (about $9 each).

If you use only one light, or have it too close to the quilt as in this photo, you will get a “hot spot” or uneven lighting. Notice how bright the right side of the quilt is compared to the other three sides. This inconsistent lighting does not show your quilt at its best!

Instead, follow the info on Holly’s site and move the quilt stands (made from a 2×4 and four basic shelf brackets each, construction details on Holly’s site) back from the quilt to get good, even lighting.  Play with the White Balance on your camera to adjust for the type and color of light in your studio combined with the tulip bulbs.  If I recall, they recommend NOT having the overheads on, but I find that my studio is so dark that I really need my daylight-bulb overhead lights on to get a good shot.  Experiment to see what settings and lighting give you the sharpest, most color-correct photo.

Light stands and tripod set up at a good distance from the quilt.

Holly Knott’s Shoot That Quilt:  For fabulous instruction on how to “Shoot That Quilt,”  visit Holly Knott’s very helpful site, here.  She collaborated with a professional photographer, and I can say unequivocally that her information–especially on lighting–has made a key difference in improving the quality of my photos.  In particular, take a good long look at the “Gallery of Wrongs” which shows common errors and how to avoid them.

And watch this video prepared by Saatchi Online, a mongo huge online art gallery.  It is very well done, with a lot of good information.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this post!  Now go make art, then photograph it well!

Woooohoooo!   I got IN!  Yep, I am thrilled that I will soon be spending a small fortune to send a 40 x 100 cm quilt to Australia to be in the Living Colour Textiles exhibit! The bad news is that I can’t share a full picture until the exhibit opens at the Australasian Quilt Show in Melbourne in mid-April!  But I can share some of the “early” pics…..

Fabric stretched out on some rigid foam core, manually pleated/folded, dye applied, ready to be covered and batched!

The exhibit is called Living Colour, and as the curator Brenda Gael Smith reminded folks, there are two parts to that title!   I have been noodling around with an idea for a week-long workshop around the theme Quilting the Good Life (c), and Quilting the Garden as a part of that.  The workshop would involve learning my collage and thread-coloring techniques with a small project (similar for all), then moving on to develop a quilt based on one’s own photography or imagery, then quilting it.  (If anyone wants to hire me to do this, please write!)  This quilt will fit in that rubric!  Although I usually use lots of batiks, this quilt was mostly my own hand-dyes with a few batiks.  And of course I left it to the last minute to make the quilt!  About 10 days before it was due, I dug out the dye pots (above) to make the red fabric in exactly the color and texture I needed, which I did by manually “pleating” the wet fabric and applying dye with a sponge paintbrush.

The resulting red fabrics used on the front (and back) of the quilt.

As long as I had dyes mixed up,

Last year’s $$ investment in the business was to put a sink into the basement. It is in the room with the water pump, oil tank, water heater, etc., but I have just (barely) enough room to put the 4×8 rigid foam core on top of a folding table and have this re-purposed kitchen cart on the side for mixing. Those of you who have take Carol Soderlund’s fabulous classes will recognize some of my color pages clipped above the mixing station. And I have learned to keep notes in my spiral notebook of what primaries I’ve used so I can replicate–like the green in a photo below.

I overdyed some hideously ugly fabric I had made, some in a workshop, some on my own.  The beauty of cotton hand-dyes is that if they turn out vile, you can just keep throwing on dye.  Either they turn good, or you add more dye and get some great deep browns and mottled forest colors!  These are clearly the before shots:

The plum fabrics on the left were from a workshop exercise. I cut a small bit off each to remind myself, then over dyed. The teacher won’t tell you the purpose of the exercise, she wants you to learn by doing. That’s fine, but if I had known the exercise was to force splitting of the dyes I would NEVER have selected the final plum color because the blue-yellow make that nasty mint green! Thankfully I did not follow her suggestion to use a yard each, but instead only wasted a fat quarter each. Which are still hideous enough!

This ugliness was a mopping up cloth. UGLY.

These are the after:

The green on the top is a hand-dye I like and want to reproduce. The blue on the bottom is a purchased batik. The pink-coral with blue splotches is the fugly piece just above. The orange-fuchsia-yellow are that plum-mint ugliness. The fuglies are going back for more color. Ugh. They will make good browns eventually!

Result:  less awful than before, but back in the over-dye (again) pile!

SNEAK PEEK:  and finally, here you can see a pile of red off-cuts from my quilt for Living Colour Textiles.  I fused the reds with Mistyfuse, cut my shapes, and had leftover bits.  Those will go into the next project, a quilt of Eli during cross-country season in his red team uniform of tank and shorts.   That one is already in the sketched out, fabrics selected, fusing happening stage!  I WILL make more than two quilts this year!

Off-cuts from my Living Colour piece, all Mistyfused. They were SO fiddly to cut I figure I will use these somehow…

And I had to add Tyger, who decided to help warm some of the fabric by sitting on top (thankfully the plastic extended well beyond the edges of the pan) of the fabrics batching by the woodstove!

What a silly cat! Tyger has his back half sitting on the fabric, his front half going paw-paw on the plastic on the floor.

If it was Tuesday, that meant I was teaching Tame Fussy, Fiddly Threads! As always, the students were brilliant!

Tuesday is the “down” day between Market (the trade show, which is only open to industry professionals, not the general public, ends on Monday) and Festival (which opens with a Preview night on Wednesday evening, then is open Thursday-Sunday).  Folks who attend Market often stay to take a class, and folks who attend Festival come early so they can take classes, then be free to enjoy the show and vendors on Thursday.  This year, I got to teach one of my favorite classes, Tame Fussy, Fiddly Threads, which is all about using metallics, holographics, and heavy threads (the kind that go through the needle, not bobbin work).

A student plays with heavy 30-wt So Fine thread from Superior Threads early in the day.

Since so many of my classes are fusing, I thought I’d mix it up when I formulated this class.  Instead, we make a stencil out of freezer paper and paint with Lumiere and ProFab textile paints.  Students can use my model or do their own thing (which I LOVE when they do that!).

This student chose gingko leaves pointing away from the center on the north-south/east-west axes. She then penciled in quilting guidelines on the black background.

In the supply list, I suggest a black background fabric.  I love this small black and charcoal check!  Her quilting is great…love the nestled-in quilted-only leaf next to the stenciled leaf, as well as the shading on her leaves, and how she alternated painted and not in the spray of leaves on the right.

This student was having fun!  Her background of black and gold fabric is somewhat visually busy, so she is wise to concentrate her stitching on the painted leaves as the print could obscure the lovely stitching.

Then in mid-morning a fun surprise!  The best thing about Festival is seeing folks you know from (mostly) the internet…the quilts are great too, but the quilters are the bestest!

Luana Rubin, founder with her husband Paul of eQuilter, was at Festival and popped in to the classroom to say hi! We are both members of a small online group–there are not so many of us and we are VERY tight! We respect everyone’s privacy closely, so we can share and be sure that we will support each other and keep mum. I also got to see Luana AND her daughter Sophie later on the show floor (photo in a future post).

Practicing on a sample sandwich before working on the stenciled piece. (Note her shirt, from Lopez Island Resort; Lopez is the island next door to San Juan Island where I used to live.  I swear everyone on the planet has either been to the islands or knows someone who lives or lived there!)

Another set of gingko leaves, this time on the diagonals, partially quilted.

And the same leaves at the end of class. Fabulous!

Oak leaves are popular, too, and easy to draw! notice how she varied the thread for the leaves.  Would love to see how she quilts the acorns; we talked about doing a dense zigzaggy thing for the caps!

Love the quilted border!

A happy student–the maker of those wonderful gingkos– in a happy and talented classroom. We got to use the Janome 9900s in class, which is similar to the machine I use at home. FAB!

And those glorious gingkos from above at the end of the day. LOVE THIS!

My next Houston post will share quilt pics, then I’ll do more on classes I taught, then more quilts, then even MORE quilts!

Some time ago, I shared with you “Listen to the Song in the Night,” which has been juried in to this year’s exhibit, An Exquisite Moment, curated by the Dinner @ 8 Artists, Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison.  The exhibit will debut at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, California, at the end of this month, then travel to Quilt Festival in Houston in October/November of this year.  I am so thrilled to once again be part of such a wonderful group of artists.  Jamie and Leslie have been blogging and interviewing those of us in this year’s exhibit, here.  Today, July 8th, it is my turn!   So please go visit the blog and enjoy!

Listen to the Song in the Night by Sarah Ann Smith (c) 2013. 24 x 60 inches. Artist dyed silk and cotton, a few commercial batiks (mountains). Free motion quilted, ink with dip-pen, paint.

Thanks to artist Loris Bogue, we have also had catalogs of the exhibit that one can purchase via Blurb (or is it Snapfish?).  When this year’s is available, I’ll share the information with you.  I so enjoy reading the answers by the other artists.  So I invite you to surf over to Jamie and Leslie’s blog and spend some wonderful lunches and afternoons–after all, it is too hot to work hard, so let’s sit and enjoy the art!–with the talented folks in this exhibit.

And if you’d like to know more about how I made this quilt and the story behind it, please visit my earlier blogpost, here.

Wow have I been busy, and I’ve woefully neglected my blog!   I’m sorry!  The good news is that a flurry of activity is nearly over.  In the past 8 weeks I have made a quilt for inclusion in a book due out next year, flown from Maine to Colorado to tape a Quilting Arts DVD workshop (more on that here), written and submitted two articles to two different magazines (more on those when they come out), and written a third but still have step-outs and photography to do on that one.  BUT–I am thrilled to share with you that Listen to the Song in The Night has been juried into the this year’s Dinner@8 exhibit, An Exquisite Moment.

Listen to the Song in the Night by Sarah Ann Smith (c) 2013. 24 x 60 inches. Artist dyed silk and cotton, a few commercial batiks (mountains). Free motion quilted, ink with dip-pen, paint.

You can read more about the exhibit, here. Last year I was really stumped.  This year it was a matter of which quilt to make:  childbirth (done discreetly–the mom’s view looking over the sheet over your knees at your newly hatched child in the doctor’s hands), Eli as a 2 year old under the blueberry bush grinning as he munched blueberries, or any of a number of other moments.  But then I remembered the whalesong.  Best of all, not only did hubby Paul, but so did the boys who were about 5 and 9 (or maybe even 4 and 8).  We lived on San Juan Island in Washington state at the time.  Our house  was about 1/3 mile up from the water and faced the Straits of Juan de Fuca with the Olympic mountains on the other side, 17 miles away.  We could see and hear the orcas from our house.  The writing on the quilt tells the story:

Cloaked in the sounds of the rustling breeze, the song drifted through the open window as I readied for bed.  Not believing my ears, I turned out the lights.  Then I began to listen.  It couldn’t be, could it?  The more I listened, the more I believed.  It was the whale song–but above water!  How could that be?  I ran to the living room and told Paul to come outside and listen.  Then we woke our young sons from a sound sleep to hear the song in the night.

We heard the orcas breathe, ripple the water, tail lob, and the thunderous splash of whales breaching.  There were so many of them, and they were singing!  The next day, still in disbelief, I called the Whale Museum researchers.  It was indeed a superpod, a family reunion of the J, K and L pods.  They told me many scientists study the whales for an entire career and never hear them sing above water.  And we four remember standing on the deck in the summer night listening to the orcas sing.

 I knew that I wanted to dye some silk for the water because of the sheen of the sandwashed satin, and found some silk I had dyed for the San Domenico Tableau quilt (here) for Mary’s dress.  I used the matte side for the sky–it’s at the top in this picture.

First round with the dye bath. The big piece on the bottom is silk. The others are cottons except for the very top piece which is a silk I dyed earlier.

Then

More fabrics dyed for the project. The cotton on the right is what I used for the back.

I used the blue on the top left in the photo immediately above, but had overdyed it to be darker and more solid, for the top and bottom panels where I would write the story.  After all, it is hard to make a picture of something you heard but didn’t really see so I though I’d best add some words!   I took some artistic license and added a full moon and lightened the scene just enough to actually make a picture not a large blotch of dark! First, however, I needed to figure out how I was going to write on the cloth.

I knew I wanted to write on the top and bottom panels of blue cotton that I had dyed, but wasn’t sure what method to use.

On the right, you can see assorted lower case “a’s” written with DeColourant (some colored) and assorted tools to apply.  I thinned the thick liquid, but then it ran.  Not the look I wanted. It’s a great product, but not the right one for this purpose.  The top “Disguised” is done in an archivally safe Sakura Jelly Roll pen, but it looks much brighter in the real than in the photo.  It was OK, but the Liquitex Ink! (acrylic ink) in white with the “crow quill” dip pen was perfect.  The variations in pressure as I wrote gave an almost italic look, so that was my choice.

Next I printed out the text at full size to make sure it would fit and to use as a guide.  I was afraid that I would get the word order wrong or space out and misspell something, so I folded the printouts and set them just above the line I was writing, covering up the  previous line so I didn’t confuse myself!  You’ll see my chalk-lines in the photo; I used SewLine by Moda with ceramic chalk lead which erased like a dream when I was done.

Above you can see how I folded the printed paper so I could follow along, line by line.

Next step was to over-paint some batiks for the mountains.  I had a few that worked as is, but most needed to have the batik design muted.

Batik fabric for the mountains. The cloth was over-painted with dark (not sure if I used black, blue or a combination).  In the lower part of the photo you can see how I have already cut some of the mountains. I wanted the foothills and coast to be even darker than higher up, where the moonlight hit the tops of the Olympics.

Next I auditioned various fabrics, two blacks for the whales, a gray (which needed darkening) for the thin strips separating the top and bottom panels from the center.  I free-motion stitched on the black sateen I selected for the whales with just a stabilizer underneath, then cut a slit in the silk (BIG gulp and holding of breath), then tucked the whale into the opening and hand-appliqued them down.

Test-driving fabrics for this and that.

And finally, the quilting. It went fairly quickly, as it was all blues from palest (which appears white but is actually a pale silvery blue) to nearly black on most of the quilt, with just some gray and deep charcoal for the mountains.

Detail shot showing quilting, moon, and white ink dots for the moon glow.

The exhibit will debut at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach this coming July.  I’m thrilled to be a part of the Dinner@8 exhibit once again, and would like to thank our various sponsors over the years, especially Moore’s Sewing Centers, Havel’s Scissors and Mistyfuse (which I use a lot)!