Some time ago, in one of the U.K. issues of Quilting Arts Magazine, Priscilla O’ Rourke showed a remarkable sense of talent. What this fine lady did was that she took an image of the staff group photo that was printed in the magazine, and then turned it into a quilted imagery. Later on, when this photo quilt was displayed in the following issue of the magazine, it not only caused a stir, but people started appreciating the art of photo quilts from a completely new angle.
After thanking brilliant minds like Priscilla, it is time for us to take a look at photo quilts, how they’re made and whether you can make one on your own. For starters, since photos are a source of art, beauty, inspiration and memories, it seems so natural to simply make a couple of photo quilts and then let them hang around in the house of the next couple of generations.
All thanks to the modern technology, it has become quite easy for anyone to make photo quilts because all it takes is a good amount of photographs, scanned images and the process of rendering the fabric. Moving on with the techniques, there’re two main methods that people follow. Do note that there might be some other ways of developing photo quilts, but we just thought of filling you in on the ones we know best.
If you were to follow the first technique, all you need to know is that it involves directly printing the image, or line art, on the quilt fabric. There are people who have a huge inkjet printer, which they use to print black and white line art on the fabric. You can Google “Maria Elkins”, in order to see how she follows this technique in detail – she’s famous for cropping images, converting them into small poster sizes and then printing them on the quilt fabric.
Other quilters are commonly known for free motion sketching of those images. Once they have printed a small photo on a paper, they take these images to a fabric printing company that happily prints the stuff on the desired fabric. The process involves additional expenses, but it is completely worth the hassle.
If you don’t want to burn huge holes in your pockets, then simply go for hand stitching. You can print line art on the quilting cloth, and then follow the trail with the help of needles and multi colored threads. This process takes a lot of time, dedication, accuracy and hard work, but the end results are quite phenomenal. Hand stitched photo quilts are the finest piece of art in the industry.
By the way, if you’re not familiar with motion stitching, you can look for Susan Brubaker books in the local library. If you’re out of luck, search for her articles on techniques of photo quilts, on the internet. This is where she discusses the actual motion stitching process, which you can use to learn and develop your own technique.
These methods are just few of those fine techniques that are used for making photo quilts. Possibly, seeing to the fact that quilting is famous all over the world, maybe there’re techniques that the common U.S. and U.K. markets are not aware of. If you know an unusually effective way of making photo quilts, you can share your techniques with us, through this website or other online platforms. Some people like to use the term, “memory quilts”, for photo quilts. This is their way of relating to their childhood memories. Take a look at a simple process of making photo quilts:
• The material needed for this process, will be a couple of needles, some inserts and pins to hold the quilt in its place, threads of different colors, a sewing machine, photos (duh… of course), fabric paper, scanner and scissors.
- Scan a high resolution picture of your choice. Choose the appropriate size and then print them on the fabric paper.
- After placing the photos on the quilt shell, it is time for you to bind them through a sticking technique that involves ironing the fabric. Once it is heated, it will automatically stick to the quilt duvet/ shell below.
- Now you can start to fill the shell with feathers, or huge puffy cotton swabs.
- After you’re done filling, start closing the sides by sewing them with the help of your quilt sewing machine.
- Leave a couple of inches off, if you want to stitch an extra border on the seams. Other than that, you’re done with the process of making photo quilts on your own. Now that wasn’t hard, was it?