I spent about 6 straight hours saturday designing my quilt for our guild challenge "Sunshine and Sunflowers". I positively LOVE this design, and I'm also thrilled with how I ended up converting this portrait for hand applique. Maybe this posting will save someone else some time doing applique portraits.
The design is a portrait of my toddler sitting in a lake au natural with sunflowers ghosted over her a la Katie Masopust. I'm going to use the natural color in the photo; pretty muted; creamy skin tones and rippling water in the background.
I tried using EQ5 to trace over it in both easy draw and patch draw. Gave up. Then I started in manipulating the picture with Adobe Photo Elements. That's the ticket. I eventually found the perfect tool -- "Cutout". There were several adjustments; but the key was the "levels". I picked 5, which gave me exactly 5 gradations of darkness. The image is still very faithful to my beautiful little girl, quite practical for hand applique, and I still have some levels left to go lightest/darkest for the ghost layer. If you wanted to do fusible raw-edge; you could use more levels and more intricate edges; but for this photo, 5 seems to be just fine.
Then I put the picture in Printmaster and made it 3x3 pieces of paper big; and printed it on 9 sheets.
I've been playing around with how to transfer the picture. First I tried putting freezer paper over top of print out; but only the lines between the lightest and darkest areas show up. Then I tried used dressmakers tracing paper to transfer onto freezer paper placed beneath it. But I think the BEST way is to use the transfer paper to put it directly onto fabric. Why bother user freezer paper at all? Why did it take me this long to start using tracing paper? I was reminded of that idea because of re-watching the Dily Fronks episode of Simply Quilts on wrought iron gate applique.
But the real question is when I can get to work sewing it. My promise to myself is to have 1 hand project and 1 machine project at a time. I'm quite a way from finishing the hand quilting on a big stack n whach
-- free form victorian feathers throughout. Can I resist? The challenge deadline is May 1. I think if I'm not done with the Stack n Whack by new years; I may have to postpone it so I can have time to finish this challenge.
susan kraterfield see my quilts: members.cox.net/kratersge